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Tim Hunt

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Clarissa

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So have you heard about this Nobel – prize winning scientist who said a bunch of stupid things about falling in love with weepy female lab workers?

Obviously, in everything that doesn’t concern his field of knowledge the guy is kind of dumb. But I’m hearing he’s had to resign from his university. And that’s a very bizarre and disturbing development. If we don’t like his gender discourse (and obviously we don’t), let’s not have him over to dinner. Let’s not follow his Twitter and let’s respond with, “Hey that’s really stupid” whenever he opines on gender. There’s no need to get him to terminate his work at his university over this, though.

Let’s also observe that we never hear any stories about doctors, lawyers, or statisticians being policed as a group as much as professors are all the time.

17 responses to “Tim Hunt”

  1. Anon Avatar
    Anon

    Completely agree! I think this is because people have a lot of repressed anger against authority figures, and what is a better authority figure than a professor?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      And you are absolutely right. That’s exactly how it works.

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  2. Rhoda Avatar
    Rhoda

    I actually agree with you on this one. Losing his job seems a step too far.

    Wish people could call out sexism without the reaction jumping from one extreme to the other.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. This is a reason to have a conversation about what he said. But what is to be gained from not having such a hugely qualified person in the workplace?

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    The funniest was the feminist on Sky News who was saying how wrong he was and how harmful his statements were and that the reason there aren’t more women in STEM is because women learn differently than men do, in a way that’s supportive, nurturing and encouraging and girls are too intimidated in mixed sex classes to raise their hands in class…. which side was she supposed to be arguing for?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “the reason there aren’t more women in STEM is because women learn differently than men do, in a way that’s supportive, nurturing and encouraging”

      • Just hit me over the head to put me out of my misery, seriously. I’ve also seen an article arguing that because of Hunt’s comments, many women were discouraged from going into science. Which is in no way different from what he said about overly sensitive women. Yet the author of the article saw no problem with condemning Hunt.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        // I’ve also seen an article arguing that because of Hunt’s comments, many women were discouraged from going into science.

        Imo, because of a real possibility of overreaction, such as a person getting fired, many women are discouraged from speaking out if they don’t feel comfortable about something. I would’ve been discouraged, at least. If every little thing gets blown out of proportion, one feels internal pressure to ignore little and ‘little’ things till they progress into something much bigger and uglier and it is worse for everybody. Or keep silent forever, if they don’t progress far enough.

        Also, other people in the group/lab/institution may turn into enemies of “that drama-creating (wo)man who got X fired because of that little thing.” Overreaction supports the culture of silence also by creating / strengthening group pressure not to make waves.

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  4. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Obviously, in everything that doesn’t concern his field of knowledge the guy is kind of dumb. But I’m hearing he’s had to resign from his university. And that’s a very bizarre and disturbing development. If we don’t like his gender discourse (and obviously we don’t), let’s not have him over to dinner. Let’s not follow his Twitter and let’s respond with, “Hey that’s really stupid” whenever he opines on gender. There’s no need to get him to terminate his work at his university over this, though.
    You could a find and replace and apply this to Larry Summers’ remarks. :p What’s the substantive difference? Or do you feel that once you become an administrator, it supersedes everything you’ve done before?

    I don’t think that doctors, lawyers and statisticians aren’t authority figures, while professors are. (I don’t see how statisticians are). Rather, I think professors have more opportunity to talk about things outside of their field and exercise that opportunity. Rather, I think with professors, there’s much more of a guild effect than with lawyers ,doctors,and statisticians so that’s why professors police each other much swiftly and stringently and why the university reacts. You can hang up a shingle and have your own practice as a lawyer or doctor. It’s difficult to hang up your own shingle and have a lab.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Summers is a two-bit idiot of which kind you can find 3 under every leaf. His only job is to try not to make an idiot out of himself in public and he’s failing at this easy task. There is no evidence, however, that Hunt failed on his basic task.

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      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        Nothing but Nobel, eh? :p (The guy did win the John Bates Clark Medal and the Alan T. Waterman award — 12 years before he started blabbering about women in science)
        Hunt did win a Nobel prize — 14 years ago. You can debate their relative deservingness or the thought process of the awards committees but that doesn’t make those honors go away.

        In both cases you have people who peaked in their academic fields a while ago and who were still doing research at the time of their talks and now (check out Google scholar,), who were to deliver a talk, where the only task before them was not to make an idiot of themselves in public, at which they failed at spectacularly.

        Hunt resigned from an honorary professorship and an awards committee.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Summers was working in an administrative capacity at Harvard at the time of the asinine remarks, wasn’t he? He didn’t do his job well and was let go. If he were serving as a professor of economics at the time of the comments, then I would be completely opposed to him being fired. I mean, a secretary who constantly loses pens and misplaces paperwork should be fired while a professor who does the same thing shouldn’t. Because that’s not what lies at the center of the professor’s job duties.

          A lawyer who advises you to lie under oath will be disbarred. But the bus driver who advises you to do that will not be fired or penalized because it’s not central to his job duties to give good legal advice.

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  5. anon Avatar
    anon

    It was only an honorary appointment, not a genuine professorship – the university was probably getting more out of being affiliated with a noble prize winner than he was getting out of the situation. His real job, the one where he actually does his science and makes him money, he gets to keep. As such, I do not think this action is in the same arena as other challenges to tenure that are going on these days.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I agree completely. I don’t think this is about tenure being put at risk. It’s more about professors being able to be as goofy and silly as anybody outside of the classroom or the lab without suffering consequences. For instance, if I stumble into a bar drunk and a skunk and sing songs off-key, that’s totally my business. But if I stumble drunk as a skunk into a classroom, that’s a completely different thing.

      A week doesn’t go by when I don’t get an email or a comment asking me how I can consider myself a professor and believe the things I wrote in one of my posts. And I just can’t imagine anybody being asked how they can be a dermatology and write tweets about how much homeschooling sucks.

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      1. anon Avatar
        anon

        Ah, I see – its an on vs. off “the clock” issue that you’re raising. Generally I agree with you, but in this case I don’t (your interesting and different perspectives are half the reason I read your blog 😉 by the way). When the entire point of his “job” was to make the college look good, and he does something in public that does not make the college look good, he is no longer doing his job adequately and so he gets fired. Seems straightforward to me. But I think this is a pretty special case.

        (And this completely ignores the red flags that his statements raise which should make people concerned about how he treats the women he supervises…)

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “your interesting and different perspectives are half the reason I read your blog”

          • I’ve totally got to ask: what is the other half? 🙂 I know it’s not my impotent photography. 🙂

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          1. anon Avatar
            anon

            The other half is your very entertaining writing style, of course!

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Oh, thank you! That’s the best compliment.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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