Mark Siddall

Mark E. Siddall is a Canadian biologist. Siddall has studied the evolution and systematics of blood parasites and leeches, and systematic theory. Siddall was hired as an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in July, 1999 and served there as a curator until September, 2020.

Education

Siddall completed a Masters and PhD under the supervision of Sherwin S. Desser at the University of Toronto in 1991 and 1994, respectively.

Career

After completing his PhD, Siddall completed a postdoc at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Subsequently, he was a fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows from 1996 - 1999. He is the author of the popular science book, Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences.

The American Museum of Natural History let him go in September 2020 after an outside law firm, Kaplan Hecker & Fink, made a determination that he had sexually harassed and bullied a graduate student who Siddall had discovered fabricating data. As part of the investigation, he was cited for violating a museum policy that prohibits sexual relationships between staff and mentees under their academic supervision. Siddall has denied that the student was under his supervision, and denied that a sexual encounter took place. Siddall did state that the student had initiated a physical encounter with him, which he had rejected. Nearly a year after that, Siddall found a serious error in the findings of a research paper she was writing for a peer-reviewed publication, of which he was one of the co-authors. Siddall asked that his name be removed from the paper if it was going to be published in its flawed form. A few days later, she brought the charges for which Siddall was later dismissed. Siddall publicly disagreed with the findings by the museum that led to his dismissal, however, after 3 months of mounting legal costs, he chose to not appeal the decision in order to protect his family from financial ruin. Even though there had been no prior harassment or bullying complaint against him, the Museum responded with immediate termination.

Research

Siddall studies phylogenetics and evolution. He began his career publishing on blood parasites. He has published extensively on leech systematics. Siddall has been described as "a staunch supporter of parsimony and a harsh critic of maximum likelihood approaches” to inferring phylogenies;