Shamed Nobel laureate Tim Hunt ‘ruined by rush to judgment after stupid remarks’

[Axulus]

As jokes go, Sir Tim Hunt’s brief standup routine about women in science last week must rank as one of the worst acts of academic self-harm in history. As he reveals to the Observer, reaction to his remarks about the alleged lachrymose tendencies of female researchers has virtually finished off the 72-year-old Nobel laureate’s career as a senior scientific adviser.

What he said was wrong, he acknowledges, but the price he and his wife have had to pay for his mistakes has been extreme and unfair. “I have been hung out to dry,” says Hunt.

His wife, Professor Mary Collins, one of Britain’s most senior immunologists, is similarly indignant. She believes that University College London – where both scientists had posts – has acted in “an utterly unacceptable” way in pressuring both researchers and in failing to support their causes.

Certainly the speed of the dispatch of Hunt – who won the 2001 Nobel prize in physiology for his work on cell division – from his various academic posts is startling. In many cases this was done without him even being asked for his version of events, he says. The story shows, if nothing else, that the world of science can be every bit as brutal as that of politics.

His treatment also demonstrates the innate cruelty of social media, and in particular the savage power of Twitter, which first revealed the scientist’s transgression. The tale also demonstrates how PR departments, in trying to protect the reputation of institutions, often do so at the expense of the individuals who work for or make up those bodies.

...

Hunt had been invited to the world conference of science journalists in Seoul and had been asked to speak at a meeting about women in science. His brief remarks contained 39 words that have subsequently come to haunt him.

“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 criticise them, they cry,” he told delegates.

“I stood up and went mad,” he admits. “I was very nervous and a bit confused but, yes, I made those remarks – which were inexcusable – but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way. There was some polite applause and that was it, I thought. I thought everything was OK. No one accused me of being a sexist pig.”

Hunt may have meant to be humorous, but his words were not taken as a joke by his audience. One or two began tweeting what he had said and within a few hours he had become the focus of a particularly vicious social media campaign. He was described on Twitter as “a clueless, sexist jerk”; “a misogynist dude scientist”; while one tweet demanded that the Royal Society “kick him out”.

The next morning, as he headed for Seoul airport, Hunt got an inkling of the storm that was gathering when BBC Radio 4’s Today programme texted requesting an interview. He recorded a clumsily worded phone message. “It wasn’t an interview. It was 1am British time and I was just asked to record a message. It was a mistake to do that as well. It just sounded wrong.”

After Today was broadcast, and while Hunt was still flying back, Collins was called by University College London. She is a professor and a former dean there, while Hunt was an honorary researcher.

“I was told by a senior that Tim had to resign immediately or be sacked – though I was told it would be treated as a low-key affair. Tim duly emailed his resignation when he got home. The university promptly announced his resignation on its website and started tweeting that they had got rid of him. Essentially, they had hung both of us out to dry. They certainly did not treat it as a low-key affair. I got no warning about the announcement and no offer of help, even though I have worked there for nearly 20 years. It has done me lasting damage. What they did was unacceptable.”

The story appeared in newspapers round the world under headlines that said that Hunt had been sacked by UCL for sexism. Worse was to follow. The European Research Council (ERC) – Hunt served on its science committee – decided to force him to stand down in view of his resignation from UCL. “That really hurt. I had spent years helping to set it up. I gave up working in the lab to help promote European science for the ERC.”

...

By the end of the week, however, several female scientists and commentators had written or come forward to defend Hunt, including plant biologist Professor Ottoline Leyser, of Cambridge University and a fellow FRS.

“Tim taught me as an undergraduate and I have known him for years,” she told the Observer. “It is quite clear to me that he is not a sexist in any way. I don’t know why he said those silly things, but the way his remarks have been taken up implies that women in science are having a horrible time. That is not the case. I, for one, am having a wonderful time.”

Hunt was also supported by Dame Athene Donald, professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, who described Hunt’s sacking from the ERC as hugely sad.

“During the time I worked with him he was always immensely supportive of the ERC’s work around gender equality. His off-the-cuff remarks in Korea are clearly inappropriate and indefensible, but … he has worked tirelessly in support of young scientists of both genders.”

Hunt is under no illusions about the consequences. “I am finished,” he says. “I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science in this country and in Europe, but I cannot see how that can happen. I have become toxic. I have been hung to dry by academic institutes who have not even bothered to ask me for my side of affairs.”

Nor has Collins fared well. “My relations with University College have been badly tarnished,” she adds. “They have let Tim and I down badly. They cared only for their reputation and not about wellbeing of their staff.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...o-dry-interview-mary-collins?CMP=share_btn_tw

A bit overreaction much?

 

[barbos]

Why is this thread created by not dismal?
You would think that Nobel Laureates would learn by now that race and sex is a taboo in science.
Hunt should talk to Watson

The irony here is that the whole development kinda proves his "point" which is basically "Women are trouble". Women should learn to ignore bad joke instead of going nuclear.
Damn! I just criticized women, now I need to hurry to bomb-shelter.

 

[barbos]

On the next conference Hunt will say "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls, One day during conference you asked about them and say something stupid or not funny and the next day you are fired"

 

[Metaphor]

I'm puzzled by the idea that social media is 'innately cruel'. Nobody on social media made up a lie about his words.

Also, what price has Mary Collins paid? No action was taken against her.

 

[laughing dog]

A bit overreaction much?

By whom?

 

[purple_kathryn]

That's the problem with men in science. If you dare criticise them they run off in a strop.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That's the problem with men in science. If you dare criticise them they run off in a strop.

Men are too emotional when it comes to criticism.

 

[ApostateAbe]

 Tim Hunt

Higher education and career

In 1961, he was accepted into Clare College, Cambridge, to study Natural Sciences, graduating in 1964 and immediately beginning work in the university Department of Biochemistry under Asher Korner, working with scientists such as Louis Reichardt and Tony Hunter. A 1965 talk by Vernon Ingram interested him in haemoglobin synthesis, and at a conference in 1966 in Greece on the subject, he persuaded Irving London to allow him to work in his laboratory in New York, staying from July to October 1966.[5] He finished his PhD in 1968[8] and again returned to New York to work with London, in collaboration with Nechama and Edward Kosower and Ellie Ehrenfeld. While there, they discovered that tiny amounts of glutathione inhibited protein synthesis in reticulocytes and that tiny amounts of RNA killed the synthesis altogether. After returning to Cambridge, he again began work with Hunter and Richard Jackson, who had discovered the RNA strand used to start haemoglobin synthesis. After 3–4 years, the team discovered at least two other chemicals acting as inhibitors.

During summer work in 1982 at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, using the sea urchin (Arbacia punctulata) egg as his model organism, he discovered the cyclin molecule. Hunt found that cyclins begin to be synthesised after the eggs are fertilized and increase in levels during interphase, until they drop very quickly in the middle of mitosis in each cell division. He also found that cyclins are present in vertebrate cells where they also regulate the cell cycle. He and others subsequently showed that the cyclins bind and activate a family of protein kinases, now called the cyclin-dependent kinases, one of which had been identified as a crucial cell cycle regulator by Paul Nurse.

Working in sea urchin eggs, Hunt discovered cyclins, proteins that bind to cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) proteins and regulate their activity. Cyclins and CDKs turn other cell cycle proteins on and off by adding or removing phosphate groups.[4]

In 1990, he began work at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, now known as the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in the United Kingdom.[9] He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.[10] He also sits on the Selection Committee for Life Science and Medicine which chooses winners of the Shaw Prize.​

That full career of scientific progress all ended a few days ago, because of a joke about women.

 

[Derec]

So a male Nobel laureate says something politically incorrect about women and promptly loses his job.
An incoming black and female junior professor says sexist and racist things about white men and gets to keep hers and is even lauded by many who share her racism and sexism.

But no, people on FRDB insist that there are no double standards.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Here is the contact page of the ULC provosts, to make such a point:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/provost/contact

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So a male Nobel laureate says something politically incorrect about women and promptly loses his job.
An incoming black and female junior professor says sexist and racist things about white men and gets to keep hers and is even lauded by many who share her racism and sexism.

But no, people on FRDB insist that there are no double standards.

So colleges in London, England are run by Harvard now?

 

[Derec]

So colleges in London, England are run by Harvard now?

First of all its Boston and second, they are all part of double standard, politically correct academia. Where those having a vagina and extra melanin are given extra special treatment.
An incoming black female gets to keep her job, a white male with tenure and a Nobel prize promptly loses his even though what she said is much worse because she is actually serious about her sexism and racism and it wasn't meant as a joke. And you still don't see the glaring double standard.

 

[Bronzeage]

My youngest daughter is a nuclear scientist. She can't talk much about her work, but if I get a text from her, saying I should move away from the windows, I'm going to do it.
Besides being a scientist girl, she is also incredibly beautiful. I don't say this just from a father's point of view. It's an empirical fact and I have evidence. Early in her college career she did have trouble being taken seriously by her male co-students. She is also a pedigreed Southern Belle(there really is such a thing), so most people assume she was had a Cheerleading Scholarship. Fortunately, in addition to being beautiful, she also has a devastating sarcastic wit. I have no idea how that happened.

Tim Hunt's remarks appeared on her personal facebook page. She got the joke, but as with all stereotypes, there is a bit of truth at the center. Hunt managed to compound every stereotypical socially awkward lab geek trait into one big mega-geek. Worse than that, it was lab geek humor, especially the part about women always falling in love with their lab partner. That is the lab geeks greatest fear and fantasy. I blame Sheldon Cooper.

I feel sorry for Dr. Hunt. It's a shame to end a brilliant career as a scientist by being a bad comic. Being funny for an audience is a very difficult thing to do. The jokes that sound so funny in your head could horrify or disgust people. Timing and delivery are everything. If you are depending on a raised eyebrow to let everyone know it's ironic satire, you can be in real trouble when your words are printed. There are no punctuation marks to indicate raised eyebrows.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So colleges in London, England are run by Harvard now?

First of all its Boston and second...

He resigned from a Board at a University in London. The Cambridge for Harvard isn't the same Cambridge for him.

...they are all part of double standard, politically correct academia. Where those having a vagina and extra melanin are given extra special treatment.

This stepped well outside of the nation's borders and deals with a small time teacher and a Nobel Laureate.

An incoming black female gets to keep her job, a white male with tenure and a Nobel prize promptly loses his even though what she said is much worse because she is actually serious about her sexism and racism and it wasn't meant as a joke. And you still don't see the glaring double standard.

Double standards involve the same judging body.

 

[dismal]

I feel sorry for Dr. Hunt. It's a shame to end a brilliant career as a scientist by being a bad comic.

Yeah, you give a speech, wake up the next day, and all your science is now wrong.

 

[Bronzeage]

I feel sorry for Dr. Hunt. It's a shame to end a brilliant career as a scientist by being a bad comic.

Yeah, you give a speech, wake up the next day, and all your science is now wrong.

It's Darwinism. If you can't make women laugh, you'll never get into their jeans.

 

[untermensche]

The wrath of female indignation fell upon him.

This is female scientists saying: Shut the fuck up you ignorant asshole.

Sometimes people suffer unfairly because they merely express thoughts incredibly offensive to some.

This is a message. Don't talk like that in professional settings.

Unfortunately this man had to suffer more than he should have to send that message.

 

[Nexus]

That's the problem with men in science. If you dare criticise them they run off in a strop.

Men are too emotional when it comes to criticism.

He didn't just run off or get emotional because of criticism, he was forced out of his career.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

A bit overreaction much?

No. I don't think it would have been an under-reaction, if you will, had they not pushed him to resign. I don't get why the expectation that people think about what they say, especially in public facing scenarios, is so problematic. Public opinion is more or less a war, and that's really nothing new. He made a stupid call, and that left him at the mercy of the judgment of others and this was the result.

 

[laughing dog]

Men are too emotional when it comes to criticism.

He didn't just run off or get emotional because of criticism, he was forced out of his career.

First, I doubt he would have been sacked, I don't think he was forced to do anything. Second, I seriously doubt that there are not plenty of research facilities and universities who would gladly pick up a tarnished Nobel laureate, so if his career is over, that is his decision.