I'm doing a research study on a computer system in my uni. A lady in another department has been advising on my research, because she sits on various committees to do with the use of the system. I had previously promised my participants that the research would be confidential and would go no further than my research team and advisers, but now I've found out that this lady has forwarded my confidential research results to the vice chancellor of the uni without my permission or knowledge. Obviously when my participants have found out they've blamed me for not maintaining confidentiality, and have refused to continue with the research, and without participants my PhD is dead in the water. My supervisor says we have to find out who's done what, let people cool off, and potentially pull this lady in front of the comittee that manages research because she's posed a serious risk to a student's research through her actions. I'm very upset and feel like my life (and my research) is over.

Like Bibi says, trust your supervisor. This is not your fault, and it sounds like your supervisor has things covered. Part of learning how to do research is learning that things out of your control can fuck it up - and your supervisor's job is to help you sort that out and come out with a PhD. Try and forget about it all for the weekend at least.

It appears the woman was annoyed about my research results, she felt it was casting aspersions on her work. So she passed it to the VC and informed my participants. I've contacted the participants' manager to explain but can't meet her until January. My study can't proceed because this has caused a lot of awkwardness between us, but I'm hoping to at least get them to finish the current bit (filling out forms). I'm going to just wrap up and salvage what data I can. The study I was doing next year is obviously cancelled, but I've found some new participants and the next study should actually get finished faster than the one I was planning anyway.

I'll have to try to squeeze some extra data out of it because of the current study being cut short. The whole thing is annoying but not the end of my PhD, which I'm thankful for. I'm still angry at the woman who's caused all this hassle though-when I found out she was annoyed about my work I grovelled, and she accepted my apology, and then shortly afterwards went and caused all this hassle AFTER accepting my apology!

Surely if this woman doesn't "like" your work, that's her problem? If she feels that people have to be subordinate to her and not infringe on her own stuff then clearly she's living in a different world altogether.