This is an interesting twist: the Observer ran a piece on Tim Hunt yesterday in which the reporter, Robin McKie, said disgusting things but Tim Hunt said some good things. Tim Hunt arguably took a fairer view of the reaction to his remarks than did the science editor for the Observer.
Robin McKie’s lead-in:
The beleaguered UK scientist Sir Tim Hunt on Saturday thanked the hundreds of female scientists who have written to support him in the wake of the furore triggered by his controversial remarks about women in science.
Hunt, who won the Nobel prize in 2001 for his work on cell biology, became the focus of furious online attacks earlier this month over comments about women in science being disruptive. He had to resign from several academic posts, including an honorary position at University College London (UCL).
However, support for Hunt has since mushroomed, with fellow Nobel prize winners, senior academics and leading scientists and politicians – including Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins and Boris Johnson – lining up to denounce the treatment of the 72-year-old biologist.
Nasty stuff. Starting with “beleaguered,” as if Hunt were a martyr. His “controversial remarks” – always a useful way to hide the actual nature of the remarks in question. He became “the focus of furious online attacks” – again, he’s a martyr and victim, while his critics are scarily enraged. And then McKie cheers on the Nobel prize winners, senior academics and leading scientists and politicians for trying to shout down the pesky insubordinate women.
I wish these people would take a harder look at what they’re doing.
Hunt says he has a long record of helping women colleagues.
“I certainly don’t recognise myself as the horrible sexist portrayed in media reports, and I don’t think the women who have worked with me throughout my career do either,” said Hunt, who added that he was particularly upset by the journal Nature which accused him of “belittling women”, an accusation he flatly rejected.
No, sorry, that won’t fly – the “joke” was a belittling joke. I’ll accept that he didn’t intend it to be, but not that it wasn’t. It was.
Hunt also pointed out that, initially, his remarks about women in science and their alleged tendency to weep had not been fully reported. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” he told delegates at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul. “Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.”
Crucially, Hunt said, he then added the words, “now seriously” before going on to praise the role of women in science and in Korean society. “The words ‘now seriously’ make it very clear that I was making a joke, albeit a very bad one, but they were not mentioned in the first reports and I was deluged with hate mail,” Hunt said.
Sigh. That doesn’t matter. Imagine making a joke of that type about people from South Asia or the Caribbean. Saying it was a joke doesn’t rescue it.
However, he did acknowledge that his “idiotic joke” had touched a nerve. “My comments have brought to the surface the anger and frustration of a great many women in science whose careers have been blighted by chauvinism and discrimination,” he said. “If any good is to come from this miserable affair, it should be that the scientific community starts to acknowledge this anger, recognise the problem and move a lot faster to remove the remaining barriers.”
There. He said that. Exactly so. And that was what Anne Perkins was saying with her “Yet this is a moment to savour” that Dawkins, cluelessly, took to mean she was relishing Hunt’s plight. Nonsense: she was relishing the fact that his comments have brought to the surface the prejudice against women in science. Here’s what she wrote, in context:
Even the response of the Royal Society suggests that the great institution doesn’t entirely get it. Science needs everyone regardless of gender, they said as they frantically pedalled away from one of their leading lights. How about, sexism is wrong, full stop?
Yet this is a moment to savour. Hunt has at last made explicit the prejudice that undermines the prospects of everyone born with childbearing capabilities. It is not men who are the problem, it is women! Women are distracting. They provoke emotions. Worse even than that, they express emotions.
And Hunt said the upshot of all this “should be that the scientific community starts to acknowledge this anger, recognise the problem and move a lot faster to remove the remaining barriers.” He said the scientific community should start to acknowledge this anger – which means it should not gasp in horror and call the anger “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs.”
“And that was what Anne Perkins was saying with her “Yet this is a moment to savour” that Dawkins, cluelessly, took to mean she was relishing Hunt’s plight.”
Oh if only she had thought to add “now seriously” to the end of her comment, it would have made it impossible to take out of context!
Friendly word of advice, Hunt. If you’re going to make jokes, try to have them be funny. That way it’s more likely that other people will recognize your jokes as jokes instead of seeing them as sexist insults. We’ll just let the fact that your jokes were also sexist insults slide for the moment so you can realize the important point about jokes. We’ll work on your sexism later.
This is good. Eh, it’s a pity he didn’t say this sooner, but I’m glad he’s said it.
Except a person who was actually present and talked to him immediately afterwards disagrees (link):
So, yeah. Fuck that shit.
By the way, am I the only one that finds the phrasing of “touched a nerve” annoyingly dismissive?
You are not the only one. It’s a passive-aggressive power play. It’s meant to insult and deride.
In exactly the same way gamers are now using “triggered” as a joke.
What has come out of “this miserable affair”, for me at least, is a strong conviction that Tim Hunt’s comments were delivered by the wrong person and aimed at the wrong target. From some of the things I have read of women’s experiences in the laboratory in the wake of his “controversial remarks”, it would seem more accurate for a woman scientist to have said that the problems she had with with men in laboratory was “They fall in love with you, they expect you to fall in love with them, and when you don’t or if you criticize them, they become aggressive.”
Is there a list anywhere of the “several academic posts” from which Hunt has had to resign? This article included a link out from that sentence, so I was hoping I could learn what they were. But nope, the link leads to a story about resigning from UCL, that doesn’t mention any other such resignations.
This is not the first time I’ve seen it claimed that he resigned from several academic posts, but I’ve yet to see any such posts other than UCL named. Perhaps he was fired from Wensleydale’s Cheese Emporium. “Have you, in fact, got any academic posts here at all?” “No sir, not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time.”
I looked into that earlier today (or maybe yesterday) and from what I saw he resigned (or was booted) from 3 posts: UCL, the Royal Society, and a science advisory post at the European Research Council.
Ah, thank you for taking the time to do that. A quick follow-up, now that you have given me some more precise search terms: From what I can see, it was not actually the whole Royal Society, just the Biological Sciences Awards Committee. https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/06/sir-tim-hunt-resigns-from-royal-society-awards-committee/
As for the ERC, I see news reports are that he resigned, but there is no sign of pressure for him to do so. Indeed, the press release from ERC is fairly apologetic on his behalf. http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/press_release/files/ERC_President_Statement_on_Tim_Hunt%27s_comment.pdf I wonder whether he stepped down on his own there, to try to take himself out of the spotlight a bit.
Based on what other people are saying about him (and the presumption that he is trying to get some time to himself), I think there’s a decent chance he will reflect on this and actually figure out why remarks like that are a problem. That would be awesome, and if he does I will fully support him.
As for the people who say “his remarks were completely unacceptable”, followed immediately by referring to the “shrieking mob” saying exactly the same thing, well, I have little hope for any of them.
1) Tim Hunt has, for decades, mentored and supported women in science. He has done more for women than 99.9% of those who called for his resignation.
2) Tim Hunt “was always immensely supportive of the ERC’s work around gender equality” (Dame Athene Donald)
3) Tim Hunt made an experience-based assertion, based on over half a century of experience, that men and women working together in labs can be emotionally distracting for both sexes. Indeed, he met his own wife whilst working in the lab!
4) Tim Hunt commented that a problem he has had, working in labs in the past, is that women tend to cry more when confronted with criticism. Nevertheless he fully supports women in science. “No one seems to mention his main speech in Korea in which, according to the ERC President, he was ‘very supportive towards women in science and he said that he hoped there was nothing that barred women from science’” (Dame Athene Donald). He simply suggests, based on his own considerable experience, that single sex labs might be more conducive to good scientific research.
5) We may disagree with what Tim says, but we should defend to the death his right to say it.
Please follow the link below to read more on Sir Tim’s story and, if you agree, sign and spread the petition to help reinstate Sir Tim Hunt:
Online Petition: Bring Back Tim Hunt!
Over 1200 signatures so far; please share this petition on Facebook to help us hit our target of 2000!
“Tim” (is he a friend of yours?) already has the right to say it. He doesn’t need us to defend that right, to the death or otherwise. He has the right to say it; he doesn’t have the right to say it free of consequences. If he says things at public conferences that are incompatible with the goals of the institutions that have given him honorary positions, the institutions have the right to tell him to go away.
As he might have suggested, based on his own considerable experience, that single race labs might be more conducive to good scientific research. As he might have suggested, based on his own considerable experience, that single nationality labs might be more conducive to good scientific research. As he might have suggested, based on his own considerable experience, that single sexual orientation labs might be more conducive to good scientific research.
Good idea, right? Labs for white people and labs for black people. Labs for straights and labs for gays. Labs for Christians and labs for Muslims. (Do atheists get labs at all? Or are they shut out?) Labs for Jews and labs for Arabs. Or maybe labs for gentiles and showers for Jews? Or labs for Jews and camps for Arabs?
Maybe there are some complications with this idea…
The petition is mostly just the usual tedious jumble of “it was just a joke”, “he didn’t really mean it, but he sort of did” and “witch hunts”, but I do like the image of “banner-waving tweeters vomiting a bricolage of abuse”. A bricolage of abuse. What a fantastic concept… As for how you might vomit such a thing, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I certainly think we should have segregated labs for people prone to outbursts of painfully overwrought prose – the inevitable outbreaks of laughter might result in damage to the equipment.
Who are the people who called for his resignation, and how do you know what they did for women in science?
I’m also a little concerned about my expectations. I’m supposed to defend to the death a stupid little ‘joke’ and a sexist attitude? I want the hill I die on to be a little bit higher than that, please.
Tim Hunt has done more for women in science than 99.99% of the women scientists criticising him! But now seriously: it’s not an unknown rhetorical device to sarcastically say something terrible and then turn around and show or explain exactly why it’s terrible. That’s about the most charitable interpretation of Hunt’s words.
Oh, was he employing a rhetorical device? I didn’t hear the part where he explained why what he said was really a terrible idea. Can you link to it?