Tim Hunt is a biochemist, co-winner of a Nobel Prize in the Physiology or Medicine category (along with Leland Hartwell and Paul Nurse). The prize was for work elucidating how proteins like cyclins control cell division. Sounds like he can be a smart person when he focuses.
Tim Hunt, 2008. Say, what was he doing at a conference for science journalists?
At a conference of science journalists in South Korea, he agreed to make some remarks “at short notice” to some women journalists. At a lunch honoring women in science. He joked about the fact that he was speaking after three women had spoken. (An example of the joke-like form: it’s shaped like a joke but may not actually contain humor.)
He spoke about female scientists in the laboratory. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”
According to journalist Connie St Louis, in the audience, this did not go over as “light-hearted, ironic” wit. “Nobody was laughing, everybody was stony-faced.”
He said my controls were inadequate.
(Painting by Edvard Munch.)
St Louis tweeted Hunt’s remarks to a wider audience. There was more failure-to-appreciate, of an angry nature. And a stunned nature. “I was gobsmacked,” said Ivan Oransky, of the ever-readable Retraction Watch. The BBC Radio Four’s Today program asked Hunt about it. He explained:
I’m really sorry that I said what I said. It was a very stupid thing to do in the presence of all those journalists. And what was intended as sort of a light-hearted ironic comment apparently was interpreted deadly seriously by my audience. But what I said was quite accurately reported. It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth. I mean what – science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.
And:
I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. I mean it is true that people—I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are sort of on a level playing field. And found that, you know, these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. I mean I’m really, really sorry I caused any offense, that’s awful. I certainly didn’t mean – I just meant to be honest, actually.
Yes, that’s a bad apology. He’s sorry because he got caught. He was just joking around! His apology is for other people’s reactions – their too-serious, uncomprehending, anti-science reactions – and not for anything he said. Add it up: lack of remorse, minimizing, sorry-if, failure to think.
Why no Nobel Prize for common sense?
What about what he said? It has two parts: romance is dangerous in labs, and women – “girls” – cry and don’t grasp that you might be criticizing their ideas and not them. You can’t work with the sniffly fools.
Even Hunt sees that falling in love goes both ways. The trouble is as much boys in the lab as it is girls in the lab. Those crazy kids!
The Guardian reports that Hunt is “in favour of single-sex labs.” Because he doesn’t want to “stand in the way of women.” Let girls have their own soggy laboratories. Is Hunt actually unaware that not everyone in the world is heterosexual, and that single-sex institutions also have sex and romantic issues? You know, I bet he knows that. He just hasn’t thought it through. I CRITICIZE HIM.
Wikipedia mentions that Hunt worked with Ellie Ehrenfeld and Nechama Kosower and Edward Kosower among others in Irving London’s lab. I have no way of knowing whether he or anyone else had romantic problems centered on Ehrenfeld’s presence. Whether he or anyone else had romantic problems centered on London’s presence. Ditto Nechama Kosower. Ditto Edward Kosower. But his argument for single-sex labs suggests that Ehrenfeld and Nechama Kosower should have left to form their own lab. Maybe then, free of distraction, some of them could have discovered how glutathione inhibits protein synthesis in reticulocytes and small amounts of RNA stop it entirely. OH WAIT, they discovered that ANYWAY. No doubt amidst FLOODS OF TEARS though.
They claimed a chi-square analysis wasn’t appropriate.
Hunt says that when a woman scientist’s ideas are criticized, she cries. Must happen sometimes. Not true it always happens, but what if it were? The critic (assumed to be male?), says an idea is flawed. The woman scientist weeps. Now the critic holds back, frightened of potential weeping. WE FEAR THE TEARS! Science is diminished.
Hunt’s solution: keep women out. Let them start their own labs. But who is the problem – those who shed tears or those who fear tears? My solution: say what needs to be said regardless of crying or possible crying. Butch up, bunky.
There’s Hunt, smart person, saying stupid things. (No, they were not just stupid to say in front of journalists. They were independently stupid.) I’ve met some very smart people (including, but not limited to, Nobelists and Kyoto Prize winners). Often they turn their intelligence on things outside their main areas of focus. Sometimes they have intelligent things to say about that stuff. Sometimes they have dumb things to say. It’s as if they didn’t have time to think deeply about everything in the world.
Marie, Pierre, what’s it going to be? One of you needs to set up a separate lab.
Many times smart people are dumb about ordinary human affairs. They don’t think they need to explore this stuff. They may think they know it just because they’re human. Sadly, it’s not that simple. Being a human doesn’t mean you’re smart about being a human. Having gender doesn’t mean you’re intelligent about gender. Being a scientist who has fallen in love and been fallen in love with doesn’t mean you have the tiniest clue in the world about gender segregation in laboratories. As we see.
Unfortunately, being a scientist of Hunt’s accomplishment and stature means he can influence the careers of women scientists. He can keep “girls” out of his lab, where they will cause trouble. He can advise others to do so.
Until now. Hunt foolishly came clean about his views before an outraged audience who told the world. This may spur change. Thanks, science journalists.
I’m just so… confused about this. And yet: I sat in on an interview with a woman where a man (emeritus) asked her how much debt she carried. He was told by the other interviewers that the question was off-limits and we all gave him shocked/filthy looks — but it was a little wake-up call about the things we all carry inside of our heads that are influenced by our privilege, age, gender, etc. — so I guess I’m fair disgusted by this man’s remarks – but resigned. This is a underground river through our entire culture, alas. At least he’s been outed.
HAHAHA! Check out this distractingly sexy stuff at the BBC.
I love that SO MUCH.
Without knowing the interview context, I’m not sure I understand why asking her how much debt she carried was wrong, or even necessarily sexist: we read a lot of stories about the debt burden on the younger generation, for example.
I note that Tim Hunt was forced to resign (his words to the Guardian – http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-forced-to-resign) from his (honorary) UCL post, and while his remarks were sexist and stupid I don’t think I see the proportionate justice of that – again, without knowing the context it’s hard to judge (did the university want to get rid of him before this? did anyone investigate how women were actually treated in his lab?). I note that his wife, also a UCL prof and a distinguished scientist, didn’t support that (according to the Guardian). I’m disturbed the whole public-shaming-rush-to-judgment-with-real-consequences thing. Should Hunt’s *comments* be ridiculed? Certainly. Should he be exiled? That depends: if, as the three women scientists defending him in the Guardian said, he mentored both male and female scientists, then I’d say arguably no.
wg
On the other hand, there’s this entered into evidence, in which Michael Eisen recounts sitting next to Hunt at a recent event at which female scientists outlined the sexism barriers they’ve had to navigate: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1728
wg
Hunt has worked well with female scientists in the lab in the past. (See my remarks about Ehrenfeld and Kosower above.) Maybe he was making the best of a situation he considered sub-optimal.
That doesn’t mean he hasn’t discouraged other female scientists, which would be more likely when he ran his own lab.
I don’t know what his duties were in his honorary post at UCL, if any. I can see why they didn’t want to hold up as an example someone who thinks it’s better if “girls” work in separate labs.
I don’t know what his duties were on the other committees he got kicked off of, whether he had influence over the careers of female scientists.
So thought they acted in haste, it’s hard for me to judge those who “exiled” him.