Paul Nurse, friend to Tim Hunt and co-recipient of the Nobel prize, had a few things to say.
Sir Tim Hunt deserved to lose his job over his infamous “trouble with girls” speech, the President of the Royal Society has said.
Sir Paul Nurse, a joint-Nobel Prize winner and friend of Sir Tim, told the Telegraph the embattled professor’s “chauvinist” comments had “damaged science”.
Of course, he didn’t really lose a job — he lost an honorary position, as I’ve been saying repeatedly. I have learned that he lost the accompanying photocopying privileges at UCL, which is the biggest cost to him I’ve heard yet.
Nurse’s comments are entirely sensible, and in defiance of all those people who have been shrieking in protest about a Nobel prize winner being criticized.
“Tim is a lovely man and I have known him a long time,” he said. “But there is no question about it, he did say some stupid things which cannot be supported and they had to be condemned. He said he was a chauvinist and that is not acceptable.
“It is sad because since I started working as a researcher in the late 1960s there have been really significant improvements and this kind of thing tends to set things back.
“The Royal Society can come across as old fashioned because you stay a member until you die so it can seem that we’re 30 years behind the times. But half of the Council are now women and we have a lot of initiatives to improve diversity. We have a Diversity Committee and allow mothers or fathers to work half time. Most other companies don’t do that.
“So it’s frustrating when things like this happen which make the Society seem out of touch.”
One thing I’ve learned from all this noise is that Tim Hunt was right about one thing.
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” the 72-year-old told the audience in South Korea. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”
Compounding the faux pas, Sir Tim then appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme admitting that he ‘did mean’ his comments and saying it was ‘terribly important’ to be able to criticise scientists without them bursting into tears.
Exactly. Even extremely senior scientists with prestigious awards.
From what I can tell, Hunt is one of the people who isn’t whining about how mean everyone is to him.
OK, he said ‘my trouble with girls’. I read it as a confession of a personal failing (‘I can’t work with women’) rather than a criticism of women scientists (‘Women can’t do science’). I think this is all very silly.
Adam Pack @2
My trouble with people named Adam Pack is that they’re being a ridiculous douchebag about the whole thing. Don’t worry, this was just my own personal failing, not an indictment of Adam Pack.
And his recommendation of segregated labs? That was just a personal failing, too?
What I find odd is that all those brave defenders of science who will till the death of their twitter accounts for the Hunt to be a sexist (even though he himself realizes that he should be criticized) or Watson being a flaming racist, don’t offer the same support to other Nobel laureates. People like Brian Josephson who believes in paranormal abilities or Richard Smalley who believes in creationism, even though the latter two are just as unscientific as the former.
It’s almost as if this has nothing to do with science or Nobel laureates, but rather a continuous campaign to preserve white man’s privilege by any ridiculous means.
I thought his segregated labs bit was a joke. I think he should have lost his honorary post as a science promoter for it, for reasons too obvious to explain (I only know three professional biologists in real life, and they’re all women, and seem very talented, but I’m not a biologist so can only go on things like them having PhDs and papers published and being able to explain things to me), but apart from that it seems to have been blown out of proportion.
@3 Throwaway, grow up. Make a reasoned argument or go play with your duplo.
how about all their fans? They too should be able to hear their idol criticized without bursting into tears (even when the fan is male).
ack
those were Hunt’s words, so in his mind: male fans will NOT burst into tears but clench fists, grind teeth, and sneer, only. [or so Hunt has led me to believe]
Adam Pack #6
Come on, lighten up. I thought throwaway #3 calling you a ridiculous douchebag was just a joke. And besides, they said it was their personal failing, so no harm eh?
You’re totally blowing this out of proportion.
I see what you did there, Alexander Z. You are a wit.
Al Dente,
Tim Hunt has said, to the Observer,
I think that counts as talking about how mean everyone is to him. I’m sure he’s just calling it as he sees it, but he really hasn’t tried to see that what he said is just one more instance of senior men letting it be known that women don’t belong, not really.
Adam Pack, I’m a female engineer, and I have spent my working lifetime tackling those jokes that are part of establishing the pecking order where women are automatically at the bottom. It is often unintentional, and so I pick my moments very carefully, so I am heard without being written off.
It’s not silly – it’s just outside your experience.
Adam Pack @6
I’m sorry that you took offense.
Echidna – I said above that I think it’s right that he lost his post ‘promoting science’ if he’s going to be that incompetent at it. There is a lot of prejudice in engineering, as well (I’m in coding, which I know isn’t quite the same) which really needs to be addressed. It’s the scale of the response I find silly, not the response itself.
Slight tangent, but why, in a field like computer science, which was basically founded by women (Lovelace, Hermann, Hedy Lamarr (yes, that Hedy Lamarr), Hopper, Kare, I could go on), is the gender balance so screwed up?
Throwaway @11: I didn’t take offence, I just think you’re being slightly fatuous.
Adam Pack @13
Simply making a point at your expense. If that’s fatuous, well, I admit I just don’t see your point needed any robustly defended declarations. But I’ll entertain the notion.
Hunt confessed he thought women were crybabies, stated he had a reputation as a bit of a chauvinist, and also implied that gender separate labs were a good thing. All of this coming from a Nobel Laureate who, given such stature, has prominence and influence within the scientific community beyond any of the women who were present. He presented himself as part of the established hurdles women must vault in order to achieve anything quite so basic as recognition or income in STEM fields, then suggested that it would have been better to discriminate against them. So yeah, his “confession” served what purpose again? There’s self-deprecation and then there’s self-immolation. That Hunt was honestly relaying his experience coupled suggesting a solution in the form of discrimination is not an indictment of the people calling him out on his shitty behavior, poor judgment, and sexist stereotyping. It’s an indictment of you that you don’t feel it’s worthwhile to take offense at this behavior.
Only by those defending his statement of sexual harassment, and saying the response is overblown. If they shut the fuck up, and let it go (they can’t, then the sexual harassment training is right), it would have died an early death.
Tim Hunt’s comment that women cry when they are criticized is just infuriating. First of all, men are not free from emotion either.. Men tends to get angry and women tend to cry because those are the acceptable emotions each can express based on cultural expectations. Basically, men are told that real men don’t cry and women are told not to get angry. Second of all, if you are running a lab, you had better find out what is upsetting people. If you are a good manager you will figure it out, correct the problem and move on.
Adam Park @ 6
What, exactly, was blown out of proportion? I thought #distractinglysexy was a generally positive, if snarky, response. And as a byproduct I discovered a bunch of female scientists to follow on Twitter. If Hunt was only joking–using women as a punchline–then I think it’s perfectly fair that women made some jokes at Hunt’s expense. Where, exactly, is the problem in all of this?
Throwaway @14: I don’t get offended because I’m an adult. If I have an objection to a statement, I’ll say it’s wrong (as I have done above about what Hunt said) or tactless (which it wasn’t because only true statements can be tactless, and as discussed his was just wrong). ‘I am offended by this’ means nothing. I could be offended by the way Americans mis-spell words, but as an adult, I just roll my eyes and let you get on with it. If I were in charge of the Public Committee for Getting On With The Americans, and make a public statement about your terrible use of English, I would quite rightly lose my post. In the same way (as I have already said), it was right that Hunt lost his post, but apart from that, he’s entitled to his opinions, stupid though they are.
Cactuswren @#17: Don’t get me wrong, I thought #distractinglysexy was bloody hilarious (I hardly ever use twitter, but I went on just to follow that hashtag). But there was a lot of quite hateful stuff going on as well, which I thought was silly.
Adam Pack @18: You’re still not citing anything specific, and I’m having trouble understanding what your complaint here is. You agree that what Tim Hunt said should have resulted in the loss of his honorary position, and that most of the twitter responses were funny (yes, there were some unnecessary comments about nose hair that I found to be distasteful). And yet you show up here complaining “the whole thing is very silly”.
Except you clearly don’t think that–you obviously care about this enough to continue discussing it something like a month after the original incident. So which is it? If it’s so silly, why are you here commenting on it? If you actually think it has some importance in how we collectively view the role of women in science, then why are you trying to be so dismissive?
Adam Pack #18
The hateful stuff was in response to the misogynist defenders of sexual harassment. Now, why are you obviously ignoring that part of the equation? My guess, is that you wouldn’t have a point if the defenders of sexual harassment and responses to them were taken into account.
Adam Pack @18
The hateful stuff started with Hunt’s “joke” and continued with his “apology”. Who has been hateful after that, besides Dawkins and other sexists?
echidna @ # 10: Tim Hunt has said, to the Observer,
That’s what tends to happen when one is all wet, old boy!
Fuck, it’s so good to read Paul Nurse’s words. He is in a spectacularly good position for his comments to not just be sensible and apropriate, but also influential. I also don’t think this will stop the melodramatic, hyperbole riders from continuing to blow this shit out of proportion and whinning until it hurts, but fuck it, it’s still really good to have someone like him saying what needs to be said in a perfectly apropriate manner. Very nice.
@Adam Pack #2
What Hunt has is a complete lack of awareness, both of the situations that women face in science as well as how to address a specific audience. [i]That[/i] is is “personal failing.”
When making a joke, intent is only half the story. If the audience isn’t laughing, you’ve failed. If the audience is actively hurt and offended by what you’ve said (say, by calling them crybabies or making light of their specific hurdles), then you’re a complete failure as a comedian, and a human being.
Hunt’s punishment has been appropriate. He’s been harshly criticized for being massively insensitive both to his immediate audience and women in science in general. He’s lost an honorary position. Considering that the sexist attitudes he expresses are responsible for the suppression of women in science, he got off pretty lightly.
It does make me wonder, though, how many women were denied opportunities in Hunt’s lab or nearby due to his specific “personal issue” and the fact that they were women. One of the hallmarks of a good leader is that they don’t let their irrelevant personal issues affect their work, including promoting others to help advance the discipline. We should be able to expect Nobel winners to be good leaders.
Oh, you mean like
Imagine if this was what happened:
“Let me tell you about my trouble with blacks,” the 72-year-old told the audience in South Korea. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: they eat fried chicken, they eat watermelon, and when you criticise them they start shucking and jiving.”
We wouldn’t even be having this conversation, he would have been let go immediately. But bigoted insults that are bigoted against women always seem to get glossed over or explained away.
…chosen as a Repigfuckan presidential candidate.
Not this shit again.
Do you pronounce “color” so it rhymes with “flour” over there?
Then sit down and shut up.
This whole thing reminds me of another brilliant Nobel prize winner: William Shockley. He was the genius extraordinaire who realized unlike thousands of lesser beings before him that Negros are an inferior race because of their pathetic IQs. Like his hero, Cyril Burt, Shockley realized that IQ is totally unrelated to education. Unlike some of his compatriots, he resisted the urge to praise slavery for saving their race, since they were so unable to care for themselves for the thousands of years of their existence. The advent of white skin ushered in the increase in IQ, so that we no longer need IQ tests; just measure skin whiteness. He was such an expert in the field of IQ Studies that everyone refused to debate him, much like the dilemma faced by Ray Comfort and the Hovinds.
Although Sir Tim didn’t go quite this far, perhaps someone can pick up the gauntlet and prove conclusively the inferiority of 50% of our population.
Adam Pack:
You know as well as I do that it’s all about cultural expectations. Let me google that for you.
Speaking of which, you mention Hedy Lamar (yes, that Hedy Lamarr) and the others as if I wouldn’t know about women in my own field.
Too many people don’t grok that women can know their stuff, despite all the evidence, even when they are talking with one. You included.
I can almost hear you react that you didn’t mean it that way. But put “yes, that Hedy Lamarr” together with the voices of men who think I don’t know what a Philips-head screwdriver is, even knowing that I’m an electrical engineer, and you become part of a chorus of voices saying that women don’t belong in STEM.
And that is why Tim Hunt’s stupid “joke” is so bad. Don’t forget that he confirmed that he really meant it, just not as a put-down, He, as an eminent scientist in a PR position, just reinforced that women don’t really belong in a lab with men, in line with the idea that he expressed last year that the low representation of women at the upper levels of science is not a problem.
He’s not the guy that you want to do PR talks to women ins science, because he simply doesn’t get that there is a problem, let alone that he is part of the problem.
I can rise to that challenge.
For any consistent measure of intelligence assessed upon a large representative population there is a 5-sigma confidence that 50% of that population will score less than the calculated norm and 50% will score above that norm. Depending upon the instrument used the terms “inferior” and superior” would need to be defined.
I do not have the data available to determine the number of blacks or women or Canadians that score more prominently within each group but from the preponderance of the anecdotal evidence I have gathered from experience (the plural of anecdote being data) I can determine the following:
58% (+- 8%) of religionists fall in the inferior intelligence group
76.3% (+- 27%) of religious fundamentalists show inferior intellect
91.75% (+- .05%) of republicans fall in the inferior range
Keep in mind that fully 81.76% of all unattributed probabilities are calculated by anal rectalation and that there is a 50.0132% probability that the numbers cited in this study have been derived using this technique.
Wow! What an astounding analysis.
I wonder if it would fit on a t-shirt.
Echidna @ #30. Sorry, I wasn’t listing women computer scientists for you (I assume you know more about than I do), but for the other people who might read it, who might not know as much. I asked the question because I thought you’d have a better answer than any of the ones I came up with (it started to pay better, it became more business-oriented and business is a more male-dominated field). I hadn’t thought of cultural expectations, so that’s really interesting. Thank you.
Adam,
No worries, apology accepted. I understand how you intended your question, and I hope you (and others who may read it) get a sense of how condescending remarks may be heard quite differently by people who experience it ALL THE TIME.
Cultural expectations also include the idea that men should have better expectations of landing prestigious positions than women. I think that as computing gained prestige, women were, to an extent, sidelined.
As I see it, there is no inherent gender-based reason for business to be male dominated, just as there is no inherent reason why programmers should be male. Business became a male-dominated field through legal structures, like the ability to gain bank loans in your own name, and the ability to own property in your own right, the ability to keep working in certain fields after marriage, and so on. It’s only in recent decades that these things have become available to women, and there is a lot of inertia in the system.
It takes a long time to move from “Class X of people are not allowed to do Y”, through “X are permitted to do Y, but it’s not the sort of thing that X’s should do, like to do, or are good at” to not even thinking about the differences between classes of people regarding activity Y. More than a single lifetime, I think. People who dismiss the effects of past laws and customs underestimate what it takes to effect large-scale change.
Studies show that words of encouragement here or there make a world of difference in peoples decision making. It’s something that you, as a programmer, can do to change the culture. By the way, it works for everyone, not just women. I am known for my ability to mentor and supervise new engineers, and it boils down to presenting a vision (in my case, designing processes for high-quality outcomes), listening to what people say (especially the criticisms), and offering encouragement.
@ Adam Pack #18
What a fucking stupid statement. Firstly, adults are not all emotionless Vulcans. Secondly, offence is an emotion; you can no more control whether or not you are offended than you can control being happy, or sad, or angry, or jealous.
Echidna,
Thank you for accepting my apology with such good grace. I can’t entirely imagine what it’s like to be constantly patronised by people who clearly know far less than you, but I did once have a boss who did the same sort of thing to me, and it made me absolutely furious. If there was more than one person doing it, I’d probably have a breakdown.
I agree that there’s no inherent reason for business to be dominated by men. I was just saying that it’s (I think regrettably) the case. Interestingly it seemed to have been much less so before the early modern period, when women often owned breweries and mills and so on (I’m probably telling you stuff you already know, it’s just something I’ve been reading about recently and didn’t know before).
I’ve been giving it quite a lot of thought and I’ve decided you’re dead-on about the cultural expectations thing. It’s something I always wondered about computing, because usually we have ‘men’s jobs’ and ‘women’s jobs’ and they tend to stay the same (the idea of having gendered careers is so stupid I can’t even discuss it, so we’ll leave that to one side). But computing moved from one to the other in the space of about thirty years, and that always puzzled me. But now it makes sense. Thank you so much.
As an aside, it’s (kind of, sort of) like cooking – traditionally a female occupation, but when it’s a big restaurant or a TV programme, suddenly the men take charge. And get all the money and their name on the door.
Adam Pack, #2
Even if I try to read it like you did, two out of the three objections are directed towards women (see in bold below) and not meant to be his personal failings:
Saad #38 – yes, having read the responses on here, and thought about it more carefully, I think I was probably being too charitable. Some of what he said was a confession of personal failing, but I think you’re right that most of it was actually remarkably sexist, even for a man of his age, and even if I try reading it as banter. I’ve worked with women (obviously), and none of them have ever cried in response to criticism. Not that there’s anything wrong with crying in moderation.
I’m not used to seeing people cry in the work place either. I can’t help thinking that if Tim Hunt is seeing women cry in his labs to the extent that he implies, then something is wrong with the culture of those labs, whether the tears are are born of fury, frustration, a sense of betrayal or whatever. Women are often socialised to express anger in tears.
What Tim Hunt doesn’t seem to get is that the culture of an organisation is largely set by the people at the top. They give the cues to everybody else. If everyone is jockeying for position all the time, or the men are frustrated and angry while the women are in tears, then the focus isn’t on the work in hand. If it’s just the women in tears, then it’s not hard to guess that there is a toxic sexist culture – again this is fixable, but change needs to come from the top, where Tim Hunt is. If he doesn’t even see that there is a problem with the culture that he is, in part, setting, he’s not going to be able to fix it.
If he was just making a joke, and he doesn’t really see women in tears, then he’s just an arsehole, whether he knows it or not. The joke was not at his own expense, it was at the expense of the women in his audience. Again, because of his eminence, he is in part responsible now for promoting a culture in which women in science are dismissed as over-reacting lynch-mobs (thanks, Dawkins) who want nothing more than to tear the great men down, and who are cry-babies to boot. All in his PR role in which he is meant to be promoting STEM to a wider audience.
Adam, I’m impressed that you have managed to change your mind in the space of one comment thread. It’s not easy to accept a cue from a Nobel prize winner, and then turn around and recognise that he got it wrong.
Well, I suppose I hadn’t really given it a huge amount of thought before, and the comments here really made me think properly about it. I think your point about the joke not being at his own expense is important – I’d sort of read it like that, as being a ‘look at me, I’m so old and out of touch’ kind of way (in the same way I’ll joke about how old I am to my younger friends, because I remember when Google didn’t exist), but having read it more carefully, with the guidance of the commenters here, I don’t think that’s a plausible reading. He wasn’t saying ‘I’m a silly old fool, and I think women should get back in the kitchen, aren’t I out of touch’, he was actually saying women should get back in the kitchen (or at least out of his lab). And that’s not funny, that’s being an arse.
So, long story short, today I am less wrong than I was before, and for that I thank you.
Even if it was of the “I’m a silly old fool, and I think women should get back in the kitchen, aren’t I out of touch” variety, he is still actually saying that he thinks that. Even if ‘at his own expense’ he’s expressing his real feelings, rather like those people who say “This might make me kinda racist, but”…
Surprised you’ve never heard of the Pan Am Games. That said I’m not having any trouble with the site.
Our Canadian Ladies 7 Rugby (and the men too for that matter ) smashed everyone to get the gold. Can’t wait for the Olympics next year when we can have a go at the NZ 7 team.
Shoot, wrong spot.
Regarding the appropriateness of him losing his position; even if he was 100% innocently joking in his initial comments, it would be appropriate to replace him because the whole point of a honorary spokesperson is that they can, you know . . . speak without people walking out of their talks wondering WTF they meant.
That said, it would be nice if scientists who support women but don’t think about it in depth could be better organized when things like this happen. I’ve heard a lot of smart, 100% well-meaning scientists say very stupid, cringe-worthy things.
Adam Pack @39 and 41: I’d also like to express my appreciation that you took the comments here into consideration and altered your position. It’s refreshing to see someone react that way rather than digging in their heels, so thank you for that.
Cactusren @46 – I try not to be wrong about things, and to listen to arguments – if I think a thing, and then someone explains why the thing is incorrect, I hope I usually pay attention and am adult enough to say, ‘yes, my opinion was incorrect, and I will now change it’.
If I can relate a personal anecdote: my young son came home from a friend’s house some time ago telling me about how hippos eat people. I said (I think understandably), that no, they don’t, they eat plants. But he was insistent and so I googled it, and he was right. Since then, if someone tells me something I don’t believe, I always try to find out if they’re right, and I will always tell them, ‘oh, you know that thing you were telling me about? You were right and I was wrong’. I mean, if I’ll do it for a four-year-old child, it’s only sensible to do the same for an intelligent adult. (I am, however, committed to disbelieving his claim that Thoth was the Ancient Egyptian god of computers, even after he drew me a picture showing me Thoth using a laptop).