Kasvitieteen pimeää historiaa Suomessa 2009-2017 : Dark history of botany in Finland 2009-2017

Abstract

After the budgetary cuts made by the Finnish government in 2015 the University of Helsinki carried out in 2016 simultaneously several disputable reforms comprising the restructuring and too deep downsizing of the administration, and the implementation of education reform called Big Wheel. The implications in the Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS) were even more disastrous due to the inadequate leadership on all levels, because some heads of the units did not know or did not want to save what still could be saved in order to help the situation of the dismissed persons and to assure their possibilities to carry out their own further research. Two outstanding female bryologists and four other people were dismissed in March 2016 from the Botany unit of LUOMUS, and their access to the bryological collections was hindered for a long time under various pretexts. The details of these and some other flaws during the period 2009–2017 are reported now in Finnish, with an English condensation (pp. 14–21) in order to provide a contemporary description and testimony and a possibility for later generations in the history of Finnish botany to judge these events and the leadership shown during this dark period.