Question: Is there anything that could cause you to lose your job ?

Nina Rzechorzek answered on 14 Jun 2019:

Really important question – thanks for asking. Similar reasons that Rebecca has mentioned also apply to vets working in clinical practice, and rogue individuals who seriously break the rules can be suspended or even struck off the Register of Veterinary Surgeons by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS). Cases of clinical neglect are pretty rare, and most complaints raised against vets largely arise from miscommunication with clients, rather than true ‘misdemeanour’ on the job. Our main responsibility is to ‘ensure the welfare of animals committed to our care’ so when there is clear evidence that we have failed in that responsibility, there may be a case to answer – examples might be failing to provide adequate pain relief or emergency treatment. Other reasons thats vets have been struck off include fraudulent behaviour such as falsifying signatures on statutory documents (e.g. pet passports or meat certificates), using off-licence or dangerous drugs inappropriately, or bringing the Profession into disrepute through other reckless/illegal behaviour outside of work (such as dangerous/drink driving). You can find out more about the RCVS Disciplinary Committee and cases that have been heard here:

https://www.rcvs.org.uk/concerns/disciplinary-hearings/

The main threat to other scientific jobs is usually funding – the funds I have now only last for 4 years – if I don’t manage to secure another grant at the end of that, my research would either have to stop, or I would have to change my career trajectory – it does not necessarily mean I would have to leave sicence completely, but I would have to move to a research question/area/group that can pay my salary, or go back into full time clinical work. Scientists are certainly held to account for their actions – scientific misconduct (such as falsifying data or abusing colleagues) can lead to dismissal from academic and other research institutions. Other reasons might be breaches of project licences (that protect laboratory animal welfare), or actions that seriously compromise the health and safety of other individuals. Scientific misconduct not only results in an individual losing a job – it can seriously undermine the reputation of any individuals that person has worked with/trained and the retraction of published papers from journals (resulting from identification of falsified data) can ruin many careers – falsification of data is perhaps the most serious issue, because sometimes it is hard to detect and may not get picked up until many years after the work has been published during which time, many other researchers may have misinterpreted the findings and wasted valuable time and money working on something that is unlikely to produce useful results. Thankfully this is very rare, but it highlights the importance of thorough peer review of papers prior to publishing, and open access publication so that anyone can scrutinise the data and the methods used to obtain it.