Tim Hunt, the sexist pig, has has been retired from his honorary position at UCL.
UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has today resigned from his position as Honorary Professor with the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences, following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.
UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality.
Note: this was an honorary position, he was not paid, he didn’t have any duties, but was just expected to show up for the dog-and-pony shows. This resignation represents no significant loss to scientific progress. His primary employment is at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, but he also has had appointments at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Cambridge. Don’t read too much into a resignation from one honorary position; he’s not hurting, except in his pride.
And also, this was a handy move to feed the narrative: political correctness gone mad! Tragic loss to science as Nobel prize winner is hounded into retirement!
That’s exactly the game one Libertarian rag, Spiked, is playing, claiming that this is how public shaming harms academia.
Hunt’s comments are as silly as they are outdated; his Nobel Prize clearly wasn’t awarded for political correctness. But this is precisely the point. Hunt is a scientist; his talents lie in biochemistry, particularly in cells and proteins, and not diplomacy. Due to the public humiliation of this 72-year-old man, British academia has now lost a talented scientist. The members of Hunt’s lab will no longer have access to his experience and knowledge. The work he had been pursuing will presumably now be abandoned.
Oh, boo hoo. We’ve lost Tim Hunt, or rather, Tim Hunt has lost a prestigious affiliation. Why aren’t we moaning about the scientific careers of young women that we’ve lost to the kind of sexist bullshit people like Hunt have been pushing for decades?
I suspect that the author has no clue what Hunt’s position was like, or what he’s been doing, but is simply blinded by the glare from that shiny Nobel prize. Did he even have a physical lab at UCL, or any students? Here’s a hint: the Nobel is awarded for notable past work; it is not a predictor that the awardee is currently doing cutting edge research or is going to get another Nobel. Respect the accomplishments of the person, but don’t assume that they are representative of the current state of science.
Older scientists are usually well past their research prime, and I say that as a fellow old geezer. That does not mean we should toss out everyone over 30, but that we ought to recognize that a healthy academic ecosystem would support diverse roles. In addition to the aggressive, active PIs, there is a place for teaching, leadership, writing, and mentoring, and us ancient well-seasoned professors often excel at those tasks.
Although, in Hunt’s case, we can say that the “mentoring” bit is almost certainly not one of his strengths.
I can’t see much value in his scientific skills if he can spout such utter horseshit and think he’s doing anything but.
It’s so aggravating to see these pricks whine and moan over “political correctness gone mad!!!11111!!” when so much of our scientific, artistic, philosophical and literary potential is being squandered by jackasses like Hunt, grinding down and throwing out the accomplishments and genius of people who won’t or can’t play by the rules of their boys club. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Hunt’s comments were social, not scientific. He’s not a diplomat, he’s a sexist. UCL awarded him the honorary professorship because of his scientific work. They took the professorship away because he’s an ass.
You don’t get an honorary position because an organization likes you so much, you get it because they think having your name on their roster gives them some prestige. If you tarnish your own reputation, they have no reason or incentive to continue to give you that position.
And now I’m really angry, because all this tempest is being made over an honorary position? Jeez.
PZ asked,
In the “Mediocre” thread, Andy Groves left a comment that makes me wonder if we possibly have heard of such a situation.
Maybe Hunt wasn’t obnoxious — just sexist enough to make for a chilly climate in the lab from which he pleasantly and evenly-voiced and oh, so helpfully made contacts for women to leave academic careers in science.
Oh, I was had! I thought it meant something! Barely newsworthy then.
Side bar: I did a quick search through spiked to see what else they’ve written on, and came across: 1) an article on “sexual paranoia” in college, which went a whole 3 paragraphs before it decided it couldn’t figure out what the word “consent” meant; 2) a profile of a gay paedophile which was used to argue the “dangers of homosexuality”; 3) an article titled, “we need to inject some humanism into British politics,” subtitled, “the election campaign has exposed the paucity of liberal thinking.”
At least they used the word “paucity” correctly.
So it’s okay to use a criminal to shame gay men, but somehow not okay to shame a misogynist for being… a misogynist.
@athyco #4
I cannot comment on how Tim Hunt treated women in his lab throughout his career, but in the particular case you mention, I can say for a fact that he played no part in my friend’s decision to not pursue a Ph.D. She had already decided that before she worked in his lab for her undergrad research. I realize that the way I phrased my original comment could have been open to misinterpretation.
At the risk of repeating myself, I am not defending his outrageous and outdated comments, but I think it’s important to understand that people with these attitudes do not necessarily broadcast them on a daily basis. It makes this kind of behavior harder to root out and confront.
I was appalled to hear Hunt’s comments this week. I have not had any regular contact with him for over 25 years, but it was shocking – almost felt like a betrayal – to suddenly hear of this behavior from someone I had such respect for all those years ago, and whose science I continued to follow with admiration.
This. Just this.
I realize that Andy Groves has said this situation wasn’t of Hunt’s making. And maybe in day to day life he wasn’t an obvious sexist jerk, just a condescending one to women in the lab. But I have both witnessed and experienced the type of subtle sexism that drives women out. In many ways it is more insidious than overt harassment. It’s shoving you to the side of interesting research, failing to share opportunities to gain more experience, isolating you from the networks you need to advance.
I know that there are women who choose other careers despite loving science, because I was nearly one of them. And I observed a lot of sexism and harassment towards female scientists in my 10 years as lab help too (and it’s not age-related, plenty of young PIs are jerks). Everywhere else that I saw this discussion on Hunt there were both men and women decrying the “PC police” or moaning about him losing his job (they didn’t get the whole honorary position thing) but not a word about women. It’s maddening.
@Spiked (from quote in OP)
Notice how Spiked focuses on the lack of “diplomacy” . I’m not nearly as bothered by what he said as I am by the fact that he obviously believes his astonishingly ignorant and toxic misogynistic repugnant musings.
Another example of success in one endeavor fooling people, especially people of privilege, into thinking that their mental excrement has merit. How tragically disgusting Hunt is. I feel bad for every woman (and man) in his life that his disgusting ignorance has affected.
“Older scientists are usually well past their research prime”
But isn’t that type of thinking similar to the original issue here?
Andy Groves
Wrong. You just don’t notice.
It’s often not the big stuff, but the small, daily stuff.
Somebody who is convinced that “girls*”** cause trouble in labs will behave in a different manner towards them every. single. day.
Somebody who thinks “girls” should not be in labs will be more than happy to help them find work somewhere else while they would be more likely to try to dissuade a talented male student.
We know when we’re not wanted somewhere.
We know when we’re mostly welcome because we load and clear out the dishwasher.
We know we’Re not being taken for full when we’re being addressed as “girls”
I have this really smart daughter who loves animals. She isn’T interested in novels, but can be found with her head in one of the many books on animal wildlife. I encourage her in this. But some days I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just tell her “just do languages like mummy”.
*Do not let children play in laboratories
**Part of the problem.
It’s true, the “public humiliation” of this old man who was a good scientist is a shame and a sad thing.
But it was his own doing. He humiliated himself.
Actually, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s Cancer Research UK. Hunt has an honorary position over there as well (Emeritus group leader), he closed his lab in 2010. He has since moved on to the Francis Crick Institute (like all London Research Institute staff from Cancer Research UK), In the same capacity .
Note that in the Clare Hall laboratories, where he comes from there is since 2012 no (0) female group leader. Before that, there was one.
As I worked there, I can also tell that his attitude towards women in science was not isolated. Another group leader there (who moved to the Institute of Cancer Research) reportedly once said that he wouldn’t hire female postdocs anymore because they are . Cancer Research UK need to sort their act out.
@Giliell, #12
Your point is well taken. WhenI worked in his lab, I was by my own admission a clueless undergrad, and was only there for a few months. I would like to think that if I stayed there longer, even someone as clueless and privileged as me would have gradually cottoned on to his behavior, but perhaps not. Both my wife and I are scientists at a US university, and it was only as a result of hearing her experiences in science over many years that gradually made me more aware of behavior that I used to be oblivious to, and it is still an ongoing learning process.
When my best Ph.D. student decided to go into industry rather than academics, I asked her why, and this was her exact reply: “When I see how they treat you, I’d never take an academic job.”
To which I can only say, Yes.
Later, I once was being interviewed on the radio about some research my group had done that had made a splash. The interviewer asked how I’d gotten into chemistry, so I told her I’d started out as a history, arts, and letters major. At the end of the interview, all about my interesting research, she asked if I wasn’t glad I’d switched to chemistry, and I said no: that if I’d known then what I knew now, I’d have stayed in history. I said it out loud.
So, I was almost one who leaked out of the pipeline.
Andy Groves @15:
It’s also likely that he (Mr. Hunt) didn’t do it in front of you, or did it in ways that insured that you didn’t get the full picture. If, say, he said or did things to communicate to his female students and postdocs that they weren’t going to make the grade, he would probably not do it when anyone else was around, or at least when anyone whose complicity he couldn’t count on. And would anyone else notice if he simply didn’t give someone the extra advice or references that he would give a male protege? Even the victim of this kind of discrimination is going to have a hard time telling that she as an individual was discriminated against. Usually, the only way you can tell is to look for broad patterns: e.g., that women are only ever given insignificant assignments, or that a much lower fraction of the applications from women are accepted than from men.
If I were to go only by my own experiences, I would assume that racism no longer exists in the USA, because I virtually never see overt acts or expressions of racism. Until recently, I’ve simply had to believe people’s reports of being victims of racism. It’s only been since the explosion of social media and hand-held internet access that victims have been able to bypass the news gatekeepers (=the mainstream media) to get first-hand evidence of overt and indisputable acts of racism out there.
One of the “benefits” of privilege is not being confronted with the ways in which the less privileged are kept less privileged.
Really excellent points in this thread. let’s not forget, also, that Hunt actually bragged to the journalists about being a chauvinist. It was a label he was proud to wear, or at least didn’t feel the need to hide.
Andy Groves #7:
Misinterpretation? This was not a particular case that *I* mentioned; it’s the only case involving a woman in Tim Hunt’s lab that you mentioned. I quoted every word you said about her. And now, although you’d said nothing about her decision process in the first post, you want to tell us “for a fact” what part Tim Hunt played and what she’d already decided. Thank you. Now, may I see your sources?
At this point, can we count you a reliable reporter? You describe yourself as clueless in those days. You mention that you were distracted by understandable grief. You characterize the time spent there as quite short. You affirm that you had “such respect” for him. You tell us that a process “over many years…gradually made [you] more aware.” The process you describe is hearing it from your wife, a woman in a singular position for trusting you’ll believe her.
Are you or are you not still a friend to the woman you added to your narrative? Have you or have you not — in light of this information on Hunt’s attitude — formulated neutral questions to ask her to determine if this kind of attitude/behavior (accumulated over her undergrad and grad work, including but not limited to Tim Hunt) played any part in her decision? So far, you’ve used her as a prop to introduce your surprise and your warning that such behavior may be hard to detect. Surely you know enough by now that your surprise is not a surprise to women in science. Surely you know by now that women in science don’t need your warning.
Does she deserve reduction to a prop for a “I’m shocked/Here’s a warning” platform?
The Unseen Women Scientists Behind Tim Hunt’s Nobel Prize
Thanks for that link, athyco. That was enlightening.
Women scientists are certainly much more marginalised and under-appreciated. However, I intensely dislike the fact that Nobels obscure the contributions of many others (of whatever gender) within the field, creating the false narrative that science is the spazmodic product of intellectual mavericks and geniuses.
Bernard Bumner
made me think of Kary Mullis.
Just seen some really on-point responses to Hunt’s comments via #distractinglysexy on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/hashtag/DistractinglySexy
chigau,
Yes, Mullis is a good example of myth building, and he has dined out very well on his discovery fable.
The fact that, like so many Nobels, he has turned out to hold and promote strange and reprehensible views does little to undermine the status of the award (given to those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind).
Seconded!
Anyhow, Tim Hunt would really not have enjoyed working at the Francis Crick Institute. It’s deliberately designed with no walls, no doors, broad and open communal spaces, specifically to encourage inter-disciplinary contact and working.
You should hear Paul Nurse wax lyrical on the extra scientific benefits he expects to come from this change. It may also stem from the years he spent in ICRF’s dark, depressing, impossible to navigate basement laboratories! You could have been dead for a week there and no-one notice.
http://aasarchitecture.com/2014/02/the-francis-crick-institute-by-hok.html/the-francis-crick-institute-by-hok-111
Andy Groves @7, here’s the thing, even assuming that your observations were perfectly accurate at the time:
He erased your friend. He did not acknowledge that it was possible to have women (like your friend) as equal participants in scientific endeavors. He retconned that experience into a narrative in which people like your friend should not have been present, implying that – as your narrative suggests he did not have feelings for your friend – that she was in love with him, that she cried when criticized, or both.
I think it’s more likely, of course, that as you agree and others have discussed, Hunt was in fact a sexist ass then as he is now. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that he wasn’t? Look how he treats that experience now.