“Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt resigned Wednesday from his post as honorary professor with University College London’s Faculty of Life Sciences after comments he made at the World Conference of Science Journalists that were deemed sexist made the rounds in social media. Then, Twitter users did what they do best: mocked him with the trending hashtag #DistractinglySexy.”
Should he have been fired? Playful comments of a 72 year old jokester or harmful comments of a sexist, chauvinistic pig harming women’s opportunities and environment in the sciences?
Ah. A scientist who’s a little full of himself and has borderline Asperger’s, or few-to-zero social skills. Don’t see many of those around, do you?
I don’t think he should have had to resign, but somebody should have sat him down to explain the sort of things that are likely to make normal people facepalm.
Prejudiceism/racism/sexism/discriminationism and a bunch of other “isms” all share a common denominator, don’t they?
[quote]Ah. A scientist who’s a little full of himself and has borderline Asperger’s, or few-to-zero social skills. Don’t see many of those around, do you?
[/quote]
72 years old. You’d think they’d forgive him for making a few somewhat provocative comments.
As long as he isn’t penalized financially or ostracized further in any way, I think he can just count his blessings and take it as early retirement, at 72! ha. Sad for the guy if he really loved his research and wanted to spend ten more years in the lab.
I didn’t find his comments that bad. Old guy showing off that he had girlfriends in the lab and was able to make them cry, rar rar, the great lover. People could easily have brushed it off as nothing
[quote=“finley”]Ah. A scientist who’s a little full of himself and has borderline Asperger’s, or few-to-zero social skills. Don’t see many of those around, do you?
I don’t think he should have had to resign, but somebody should have sat him down to explain the sort of things that are likely to make normal people facepalm.[/quote]
It’s more than just face palming that is at stake. These attitudes of leaders and influencers in the field discourage women from entering research, which is a loss for everyone. If the guy was the janitor or just a low level colleague then fine. But presumably he has influence over the careers of the women he works with. If he thinks this about women then he is likely to pass them over for promotion, downpay their work, fail to see their value, and all manner of non-trivial actions that directly affect the workplace and the female researchers ambitions and livelihood.
72 is no excuse. My father is 80 and would never make such remarks.
[color=#000080]“If he thinks this about women then he is likely to pass them over for promotion, downpay their work, fail to see their value, and all manner of non-trivial actions that directly affect the workplace and the female researchers ambitions and livelihood.”[/color]
I’m not sure if South Korea has sexism, at least not in any way similar to the west, so the part where he was “greeted with stony-faced silence” probably had more to do with a language barrier than it did with disapproval.
Before reaching this conclusion you might have considered to read the original source, but as usual most of us rely on reading the TL;DR: section.
Anyway: It was a lunch talk at a science journal conference, mostly journalists attending. If the source is to be trusted it was sponsored by some powerful role model Korean female scientists and engineers
Now you have Tim Hunt, cracking a ironic joke about himself; it goes pretty much like this:
“Hi, I am Tim people call me chauvinist
That’s true let me tell you about girls (insert sexism)
In fact i am so much wow sexist, i favor single-sex labs!” (<-- That’s the pun)
Now a not too funny opening joke, especially one involving irony is not gonna fly infront of any Asian audience…
Nobody laughed; much awkwardness.
(TL;DR, With Irony,in English, towards asian audience no joke possible ever)
Got picked up by some attendee, who calls herself a scientist cuz she published smth. with both words “Twitter” and “Swine-flue” in the same title and is used to work as a freelancer.
He was absolutely right to resign. Such an attitude in someone at the top of his profession is shameful, and speaks volumes. Sexism is rife in science:
[quote]Now a not too funny opening joke, especially one involving irony is not gonna fly infront of any Asian audience…
Nobody laughed; much awkwardness. [/quote]
Yup; really, guys, I think that’s all it is. We’re talking about a socially-inadequate man who’s spent most of his life with his head buried in a mountain of tedious research papers. He made a cringeworthy joke because he wants people to think he was the Benedict Cumberbatch of his department back in the day. The future of science isn’t at stake here, either for men or women. I can think of far worse threats to the existence and progress of science. Whatever happened to the stereotype of the eccentric English nutcase?
All sorts of discriminatory practices do exist in academia, including sexism. It’s possible this guy also indulges in such things. But we can’t be sure just from a couple of one-liners, and people shouldn’t be fired just for being unfunny. That way madness lies. Apart from anything else, you’d reduce the available pool of qualified lecturers by about 90%.
[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“finley”]Ah. A scientist who’s a little full of himself and has borderline Asperger’s, or few-to-zero social skills. Don’t see many of those around, do you?
I don’t think he should have had to resign, but somebody should have sat him down to explain the sort of things that are likely to make normal people facepalm.[/quote]
It’s more than just face palming that is at stake. These attitudes of leaders and influencers in the field discourage women from entering research, which is a loss for everyone. If the guy was the janitor or just a low level colleague then fine. But presumably he has influence over the careers of the women he works with. If he thinks this about women then he is likely to pass them over for promotion, downpay their work, fail to see their value, and all manner of non-trivial actions that directly affect the workplace and the female researchers ambitions and livelihood.
72 is no excuse. My father is 80 and would never make such remarks.[/quote]
I completely disagree. The world has gone mad. This is pure witch sniffing bullshit.
Same with that scientist reduced to tears last year over his choice of freaking shirt - though mercifully he was merely humiliated and (presumably) didn’t have his career ruined.
Feminists these days. . . It’s real Hitler Youth stuff.
Not just feminists by the way (though they are among the worst - what with their ‘rape culture’ and other nonsense), same applies to many other lefty groups - and I say this as a lefty. Completely intolerant ideologues, and hugely into bullying whoever catches their attention for the wrong reasons.
Whoever said he was no longer a practicing researcher at 72 years of age is wrong, BTW. Still active, still in the lab but mostly doing the bigger strategy stuff that senior scientists do. in fact, he is the Principal Scientist of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in England, with a Nobel in 2001. And a very likable guy to boot. Yes, I know him, and I think he’s been misrepresented somewhat, although he is a bit old-fashioned and chauvinistic. As you’d expect from his generation, who don’t always change to follow the latest in PC directives as much as the younger guard would like. Deal with it.
Plenty of scientists around still researching hard at that age, and beyond. And many of them do it for free: “Emeritus Professor” status usually carries no income but will provide a lab and an office and research support staff…
I hope you’re not equating a foolish remark with abusing children? :s
I think urodacus answered that point. World-class performers - scientists, businessmen, politicians - are all a bit odd. You make allowances. Even by the standards of his time, Winston Churchill was appallingly racist (although he made a point of not shouting his mouth off). But he did his job well and everyone knew it. William Shockley was an asshole and a bigot. The world would have still been much worse off if he’d been fired (earlier than he was). Steve Jobs was, and Larry Ellison still is, the sort that you do not cross; they used people for personal advantage and abused people who didn’t give up what they want. Nevertheless both have made the world (IMO) a better place.
When it comes to scientists: who really gives a shit about their private views? Does it affect the world at large? Unless they’re advocating sterilisation programmes (like Shockley) it really doesn’t matter. A couple of my lecturers at university were both brilliant and weird, and they were hired on the basis of their brilliance. My technical drawing teacher at school was unashamedly racist to every non-white kid in the class (including me). Nevertheless, he was a bloody good teacher with exacting standards, and we could mostly overlook the racist remarks and get on with producing the best possible work, which he expected from everyone without discrimination.
You don’t make excuses for these people - anyone is entitled to tell Tim Hunt what they think of his views - but you don’t need to cut off your nose to spite your face, or go nuclear on something that’s fundamentally trivial.
Companies and institutions generally do not allow people that represent them to speak their mind (badly) in a public forum and escape repercussions. People get fired over tweets, over being heard to call the boss’s wife an old bag, over criticizing company policy in a public way that may damage the company’s reputation.
In my field a number of Lonely Planet authors are now essentially blacklisted because of critical statements they made and on Facebook and blogs.
If Hunt had said this at a private party it would have gone nowhere. But he said it at a conference and embarrassed publically all the institutions he worked for. There’s no arguing with that. He embarrassed them. They didn’t like that and sought to limit that damage.
Sad, but that’s really about all there is to this.
Personally I think they should have just made it a condition he is not allowed to speak publically and allowed him to continue his work.
Obviously protecting their reputation, without which they wouldn’t have any funding to do any research, is more important to some institutions that one old guy nearing retirement.
It’s no really about ‘protecting reputations’ so much as pandering to the permanently hysterical and unhappy self-appointed representatives of ‘disadvantaged minorities’. Since these nutters can never be appeased it doesn’t seem a good direction to take.
I’m not even sure there was anything sexist about what he said. Some comments about males and females hooking up at work (fact), the observation that women cry more easily than men (fact), and then he dared voice an (apparently joking) opinion that single sex labs work better. Though even if he did make a sexist remark I’m not sure I see the issue.
Now if a female scientist had said a week ago that she liked single sex labs for whatever reason then she’d probably be sitting on a few million bucks in funding by now. No way would she be getting fired for sexism.
