Janet Stemwedel takes a different view of the reactions to Tim Hunt from that of Professor Richard Dawkins FRS. Her view is pretty much the opposite of his.

The vigorous reactions to remarks by biochemist Tim Hunt about women in science on social media and elsewhere are being cast as “internet shaming.” That’s a mistake. The reactions are, in fact, exactly part of the way scientists engage with each other to build knowledge.

Tim Hunt, winner (with Paul Nurse and Leland H. Hartwell) of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, made news last week for remarks he made to members of the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations at a luncheon at the 2015 World Conference of Science Journalists…

…Asked to clarify his position, Hunt asserted that he “meant the remarks to be humorous” but affirmed that he “just meant to be honest.” In the wake of the public criticism, Hunt resigned an honorary post (one with no salary, teaching responsibilities, or lab space) at University College London (UCL), though there are conflicting accounts of whether this resignation was voluntary or not. Now, the vocal criticism of Hunt’s remarks is being characterized using hyperbolic terms like “lynchmob,” “witch-hunt,” and “disemboweling.”

Stemwedel cites Robert Merton’s “norms of science,” in particular universalism (everybody can contribute to science and social status is beside the point) and organized skepticism (is what Hunt said a crock of shit?).

There’s another facet of the situation worth considering in the context of the norms of science: the content of Hunt’s controversial claims seem to reveal him to be falling short on the norm of universalism.

Merton wrote about instances where members of the scientific community failed to live up to the norms of science, usually due to pressures from the larger societies in which the scientists were embedded. Writing in 1942, when pressures from the Nazi regime on German scientists were likely on his mind, Merton noted:

Scientists may assimilate caste-standards and close their ranks to those of inferior status, irrespective of capacity or achievement. But this provokes an unstable situation. Elaborate ideologies are called forth to obscure the incompatibility of caste-mores and the institutional goals of science. Caste-inferiors must be shown to be inherently incapable of scientific work or, at the very least, their contributions must be systematically devalued. [3]

It’s hard not to see Hunt’s remarks about “the trouble with girls” in the lab as suggesting that women as a group are inherently incapable of scientific work because of their emotions, or their tendency to provoke emotions in men (who are assumed to be capable of scientific work). His claims, in other words, work to identify women as caste-inferiors rather than to recognize them as equal members of the scientific community.

Zing.

But preemptively characterizing women scientists as a group as likely to cry, as Hunt did, falls down on universalism, writing them out of the knowledge-building conversation before they’ve even had a chance to be heard. (Writing women off like this is ironic in light of the contributions women made to the research for which Hunt shares a Nobel Prize with two other men.)

Professor Richard Dawkins FRS please note.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

While we’re on the subject of Famous Pale Male Scientists Defending Other Famous Pale Male Scientists From Witchy Baying Feminists, there’s also Brian Cox.

The scientist and broadcaster Prof Brian Cox has said it was wrong the way a Nobel laureate scientist was “hounded out” of his university post over controversial comments he made about women working in laboratories.

Cox said the remarks by Sir Tim Hunt had been “very ill-advised” but that the response – which saw him give up positions at University College London (UCL) and the Royal Society – had been disproportionate.

Disproportionate to what?

UCL and the Royal Society want to attract women to science. They don’t want to repel women from science. They don’t want to alienate women already in science. So why is it disproportionate for them to dump a Famous Pale Male Scientist who goes to a conference in a foreign country and gives a talk in which he talks about women as if they were pets or small children?

Here’s what the Royal Society said:

Sir Tim Hunt has today contacted the Royal Society to offer his resignation from the Society’s Biological Sciences Awards Committee. The Society has accepted that resignation.

It was an awards committee. Is it “disproportional” that they allowed him to resign from that? Is it “disproportional” if they nudged him to resign?

Think about it. He’s on the committee, and he made those dismissive remarks about women…so how trustworthy does the committee appear? Not very. Maybe it would pass over women who should get awards, or maybe it would give awards to women who shouldn’t get them. It’s the wrong sort of committee for Sir Tim Hunt to be on.

I don’t see the disproportion.

The rest of what the RS said:

Sir Tim Hunt’s recent comments relating to women in science have no place in science. The Royal Society believes that too many talented individuals do not fulfil their scientific potential because of issues such as gender discrimination and the Society is committed to helping to put this right.

Sir Tim Hunt has made exceptional contributions to science in terms of his own research on the cell cycle and its implications for our understanding of cancer which led to the award of the Nobel Prize. Over the years he has also supported the careers of many young researchers, often travelling tirelessly to support young people all over the world. It is the great respect that he has earned for his work that has made his recent comments so disappointing, comments he now recognises were unacceptable.

He hasn’t been sent to the North Pole, he’s simply resigned from a committee.

Back to Brian Cox.

Cox acknowledged that while there was a serious issue about the “perceived air of sexism” that deterred some women from pursuing careers in science, he said that he did not believe Hunt should have been treated in the way that he was.

Cox said Hunt was “good person and a great scientist” and that as a man in his 70s, it was perhaps not surprising that Hunt was “slightly unreconstructed”.

That’s not the issue. The point isn’t to punish him, it’s to make UCL and the RS not hostile to women in that particular way. That’s a sensible and reasonable goal. It’s a more important goal than protecting the feelings of Sir Tim Hunt in the wake of his dismissive remarks. I don’t think Brian Cox should be putting Hunt’s feelings ahead of efforts to remove obstacles to women in science.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme: “You can make the argument that senior figures in science have to be first of all aware that there is a central problem of women progressing up to the highest levels of science and secondly, therefore, have to be mindful of that and careful of their language.

“On the other side of course, there is the wider problem of trial by social media. People do make ill-advised comments from time to time so is it appropriate to hound someone out of their position at a university or indeed is it appropriate for the university to react in the way UCL in this case did and ask someone to resign or threaten to sack them?”

If it had been a spontaneous remark at the pub, no. But it wasn’t. It was a prepared talk at a professional conference. It’s extraordinary the way defenders of Hunt keep minimizing it. It’s extraordinary that Cox apparently can’t see the problem with Hunt’s saying essentially that women are a big pain in the ass in the lab and should be shunted off into their own labs by themselves. At a professional conference.

“To have a Nobel prize winner – and by all accounts a great scientist and a good person – being hounded out of a position at UCL after all those years of good work and science, I think that’s wrong and disproportionate – with the caveats I mentioned.”

Cox acknowledged that there were problems in getting young women to take up careers in science and engineering, and said there were “big problems” that needed to be addressed when it came to career progression for women.

“There is a problem in science and engineering and the problem is that we don’t have enough women going into certain areas, particularly engineering,” he said.

And blah blah blah blah, but having said that – Tim Hunt should still have those positions from which to make dismissive remarks about women at professional conferences.

Why?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, who started the #distractinglysexy hashtag, explains that she didn’t get Tim Hunt kicked out of anything and neither did the hashtag.

Despite claims that the response to Hunt’s comments constituted an online “march of the feminist bullies”, no one who was part of this humorous attempt to highlight the varied and complex work of female scientists called for Hunt’s resignation or hounded him online, but that was the way it was framed.

There were undoubtedly unpleasant people on social media crowing about the man’s downfall but as far as I could see the discussion was largely jocular and – owing to the fact that many of the female scientists were posting photos under their own names – mostly professional.

The Hunt controversy continues to make headlines, with Boris Johnson and Brian Cox wading in this week as the backlash to the backlash. I even heard it said on Radio 4 this morning that “Tim Hunt was hounded from his job by a Twitterstorm”. This is patently not the case.

I’ve seen serious people who should know better Twitter-moaning about the feminist “witch hunts” and the desecration of the memory of John Stuart Mill. But that’s not what happened.

In actual fact it was clearly embarrassment on the part of the scientific community at his retrograde sexism, and that sexism being splashed across the media, which led to pressure on him to resign. University College London, where Hunt held a professorship before his resignation and which was the first university to admit women on the same terms as men, would have no truck with comments such as Hunt’s. No doubt concern about an international PR disaster played a part, but anyone who knows anything about the university’s founding principles would have expected this result, whether justified or not.

And that’s just normal for people who have jobs and positions and titles. Tenure protects academics, but Hunt wasn’t pushed out of any tenured jobs – he has already retired from those.

Twitter also gives the illusion of reversing the normal power dynamics. Suddenly powerful people – often men – and corporations, cannot ignore the outraged voices of the “rest” of the population. Yet this is an illusion. By blaming the downfall of Hunt on mobs of internet feminists, the media are ascribing them power, transforming everyone on social media with feelings about sexism into a dangerous monolith that threatens free speech. They must then be criticised and undermined, rendering them even less powerful than before.

Heads we win, tails you lose, neener-neener.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)