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Unread 07-11-2020, 01:12 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Mark, a lot of these things--not calls for violence, which are always unacceptable, but calls for firings or boycotts or other real consequences--have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Some of those firings, etc., are completely unjust. Others are more debatable.

For example,

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell View Post
72 year old Nobel Prize winning scientist Tim Hunt is forced to resign from all his academic and honourary posts after a conference speech in Korea. He was asked what he thought about women in the sciences and replied that men and women in labs together are a bad idea because "they fall in love with you and then it ends, and they cry". Why? Twitter storm. (What wasn't reported were the words he immediately followed this with, which made clear it was a joke. A bad one, but he's a 72 year old biochemist. He isn't required to be funny or 'woke': "Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without a doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women. And you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.”)
I don't see why "a 72 year old biochemist" like Hunt, who has long held tremendous power over who does and does not get opportunities in his field, should get a pass on saying--even in jest--that female scientists, regardless of their professional qualifications, should have those opportunities limited for the convenience and preference of men like himself. (And I also don't see how it's a "self-deprecating joke," as he said in the quotation below, to suggest that he's so irresistible to the ladies that they just can't help falling in love with him if they work in his vicinity. Sounds more like boasting, to me.)

Here's a different view on whether Hunt's comments about women in labs should be forgiven as just a harmless joke gone awry:

Quote:
As a participant at the World Conference of Science Journalists last week in Seoul, I had a ringside seat for the running story of Nobel Prize-winner Sir Tim Hunt’s dismissive and offensive offhand remarks about female scientists. Reducing them to romantic distractions in the workplace that wilt in the face of criticism, he stunned an international audience by even calling for “single-sex labs.”

A social media uproar soon followed, and the 72-year-old British scientist was asked to resign from positions at University College London and the Royal Society. Hunt also stepped down from an advisory appointment at the European Research Council. In an exclusive interview at his British country home with the U.K.’s Observer, published online on Saturday, Hunt claimed that he’d only meant to make “a self-deprecating joke,” and he complained that he’d been “hung to dry by academic institutes who have not even bothered to ask me for my side of affairs.” His wife Mary Collins, herself a prominent scientist, backed him up, but there are numerous reasons to reject this as a misunderstood-martyr’s tale.

In fact, from the very start, Hunt had several opportunities to clarify his comments and make a more sincere apology for his injurious public remarks about the “trouble with girls” in science. At a hotel breakfast the day after his remarks, American journalist Deborah Blum followed up by asking him if his call for segregated labs had been a joke. As she reported in a series of tweets yesterday, he largely stood by what he’d said. Later, on BBC Radio 4's Today program, Hunt said he was “sorry” for offending his audience, but added: “I did mean the part about having trouble with girls.”

Hunt should have known how painful reducing women to sexual objects would be. On Sunday, Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley, recounted in a blog post how earlier this year, Hunt and he had been invited as “external advisors” to a meeting of young Indian researchers held in Kashmir. In one session, several women talked about how their careers had been held back by their superiors’ inability to control their lust. Apparently, the message was lost on Hunt. Referring to the social media fallout after the events in South Korea, Eisen wrote:

Quote:
When I am thinking about what happened here, I am not thinking about how Twitter hordes brought down a good man because he had a bad day. I am instead thinking about what it says to the women in that room in Kashmir that this leading man of science – who it was clear everybody at the meeting revered – had listened to their stories and absorbed nothing. It is unconscionable that, barely a month after listening to a women moved to tears as she recounted a sexual assault from a senior colleague and how hard it was for her to regain her career, Hunt would choose to mock women in science as teary love interests.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...-were-no-joke/
Bottom line: I think it's a perfectly reasonable use of free speech for women and their allies to use social media to call for consequences when prominent people make sexist remarks in public, and for universities and other organizations to decide that that's not who they want representing them anymore. And might I point out that the professional consequences to a 72-year-old who loses a few mostly-honorary positions very late in his career are vastly less than the professional consequences to young female scientists he may have avoided hiring or promoting over the years, for reasons of his own self-preservation (i.e., avoiding "having trouble with girls")? I can't see him as an the victim here.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 07-11-2020 at 01:22 PM.
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