Nobel Prize Winner Wants Single Sex Labs; Women React

a reply to: Pinke

Having read Your thread which wasn't there when I wrote mine up, I am glad it was just a moment of 'confusion'. He clearly is liked by his female colleagues and has probably simply come to what a friend described to me the other day as , 'the dinosaur stage' which many feel when their own generation starts dying off and they realise that they don't understand half of what younger people are saying in their own language as the lingo has moved on.

a reply to: Pinke

Hey Pinke,

Thanks for checking in! Hope your headache gets better.

Collins clutches her head as Hunt talks. “It was an unbelievably stupid thing to say,” she says.

Yes it certainly was. Unbelievably stupid. # happens!

Tim Hunt is 72. Did we expect the cutting edge of social progression from people who were born when Germany was retreating from Russian tanks?

I never thought I'd say it, but 72 isn't THAT old! I'm almost there myself!

Here in the USA people don't typically retire until the age of 66 and many defer their retirement til the age of 70 or later. Look around and I'll bet you'll see that many of the "big wigs" in corporations, universities and governments are old guys! Stupid verbal blunders aren't limited to the elderly!

I don't believe that this, highly respectable and beloved professor and Nobel Prize winner said something this stupid because of his age, nor do I believe that his faux pas does anything to taint his work.

I didn't post this thread to shred the man's reputation. I posted it to share the comments and memes, posted by "girl scientists" , as a fun, entertaining and not to serious response to his silly sexist comment.


Published on Jun 12, 2015
Female scientists responded to the sexist comments of Tim Hunt, a Nobel winner, using the hashtag #Distractinglysexy.

a reply to: windword

Hiya Windward,

Headache is getting there >.< it will be better just in time for work probably haha

I understand where you're coming from I think. I guess I just try to see things from different points of view, and whilst some of the memes are funny I can also see that this old person who is likely less than twenty years from death is going under a lot of stress over this, and I've heard much worse.

There are some social movements that don't show much understanding for old people. Particularly old people who aren't with the times I guess. There are more people making fun of this old person that speaking to with compassion I feel and most of them don't know him.

Maybe I was easy on my grand parents when they were alive, but they often said stupid things. I still loved them. I'm sure someone loves Tim Hunt too. Am I being too soft? Am not sure.

a reply to: Pinke

Maybe I was easy on my grand parents when they were alive, but they often said stupid things. I still loved them. I'm sure someone loves Tim Hunt too. Am I being too soft? Am not sure.

Haha. My mom was always older than me, and she was always stupider than me too! LOL (All teenagers have stupid parents!)

I remember one time, when we were kids on a family vacation visiting the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River was red, red, red, with mud. My mother had an epiphany!

"No wonder the Indians had red skin! They drank the water!"

LOL. We never let her forget that one!

Science is technical. It uses big words and they have test tubes and "gzzzzzt" machines with lights.

Chicks like, do their nails and talk about boys and have cooties.

Makes perfect sense to me.

a reply to: windword

E N J O Y



Rebecca Watson leads the charge to nail herself to a cross for all women in science over Tim Hunt's silly off-hand joke.

Sources:

www.youtube.com...
www.theguardian.com...

I haven't read his exact words, if he said women in science should be discouraged then he's 100% wrong. If he said relationships at the work place should be discouraged then he's 100% right.

In either event, pushing him out of "science" field in general is wrong. If he actually thinks women should be kept out of the STEM fields then he should not be put in a position of authority over women or in a position to hire people....but the man should be able to make a living, no matter his opinions.

a reply to: JeanPaul

That's not how I read it. It seems that he's fine with women in science.... he just doesn't want to work with them because of distractions.

It is sad that the world has come to the point where a world-leading chemist is fired and ridiculed because people disagree with an opinion he has.

Is this not exactly what happened to Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson?

So what if he doesn't want to work with women scientists. Was he forcefully trying to get women out of his lab?

If Newton was alive today he would have been forced out of his lab long ago. He thought himself a gift from God to the world and his duty was to listen to God's whispers while everyone else in his life was their to get in his way.

Win for the PC Police.

I think it was all done in humor, both his statements and the responses of the women, and I am all for that.
Humor is a great way to air sensitive issues.

Because yes, attraction happens between people when they work together, that happens in ALL areas of work.
(hetero and homo). A fact of life we just can't eliminate.

Also, on the whole, women do tend to cry easier when critisized.
Some have learned (consciously or not) to use that to manipulate.
Some have a lot of pride and don't want others to respond to it in anyway, it remains a way of discharging increased stress hormones through the tear ducts, to clear the mind and be able to get back to work efficiently.
-The same way other people might use sweating to get that out.

Personally, I prefer to shed a few quick tears and get on with it, then to hold it in and wait to get to the gym after work. Because the hormones continue to effect my brain, heart and blodd pressure, making my mental processes less clear. I hate when people over react to seeing that, and feel they must come over and "do something" about it.
I try to go do it in the bathroom if possible, but if I cannot get away from the duties I am doing, I just let them drop there. I tell the ones who come over to ignore it, there is no problem, I am just relieving myself of a momentary stress, but that doesn't always relieve their discomfort.

In areas where intellectual skills and objective thought are essential, people tend to have followed a path of developing the IQ and neglecting the EQ. They are less skilled at dealing with emotions, in themselves, and in others. They are uncomfortable and de-stabilized by them more so than those who have spent less time on intellectual development and more on relational development.

You can see the equivalent in people who have a focused on career choices which favor manual or relational skills, who can't stand philosophical or abstract thinking. It's all useless babble that serves nothing but giving them a headache, because they haven't developed the same mental skills for handling it.

So emotional attractions and reactions become a problem for some people in areas of scientific research, where objectivity is strived for. Unfortunately, we are human animals and haven't found a way yet to eliminate emotional response systems in our bodies. Perhaps soon, if we can engineer some really great androids to take over the earth....

This applies to any area where there is mixed genders, either gender could be distracted by the other when they are trying to either learn or work on projects. Rejection, infatuation, love, hate, irritation, crying and admiration all situations that can reduce productivity. He was expressing what does happen, but the problem is he hasn't learn to deal with it like most other humans in mixed gender situations.

And I speak as man, that I learned to deal with all these issues in middle school, and I think that most people do as well.
He just never did.

This guy has no right to voice an unpopular opinion, even in the form a joke, and especially if he wasn't all that serious about it. We should exaggerate and misconstrue the crap out of this, grab the tar and feathers, and ready the pitchforks. Anyone who speaks a word that doesn't fit into our progressive world view will be shunned! Dissenting opinions have NO place either here on ATS or here in the Land of the Free*! Also, he should be tried for communist leaning and/or witchcraft.

* Land of the Free does not imply either guaranteed 'freedom' nor 'land'. It does, however, guarantee harassment, libel, slander, hyperbole, shaming, and facepalming.

Trial by media. No matter how you attempt to stretch his comments into miniskirts=rape equivalence, it's a reach. They cashiered him completely, in one day. They must have been tripping over each other to disgrace him. It would seem he resigned more than a few titles/positions, and by his wife's account, by extortion. In my opinion, they are teaching us lessons, conditioning us. Academia, printing, media all at their control. These are weapons and they just emptied a fusillade on this guy. I guess now we are supposed to be afraid of police, and impromptu speech?

Look at this guy's accolades! From this I come away with the fact that the more you achieve in your career field, the more you are beholden to PC protocol, even as it evolves from the skin off your ass. They crucified him because in the future there are more speech restrictions to come, and I think they should personally acknowledge this. It's career blackmail based on hidden restrictions. It's Orwellian.

From the wikipedia link: en.wikipedia.org...

"Physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox, speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World at One, criticised what he saw as the hounding out of Hunt as a disproportionate response to concerns over his comments, and part of a "wider problem of trial by social media"

# 463

a reply to: TheWhiteKnight

Not a reply to you. My apologies.

Reply to OP. Does this not sound a little islamic? LOL seriously. I'm concerned at the very thought of segregation by sex.

a reply to: NthOther

So instead of holding people accountable for personal responsibility, we should punish the genders and keep them apart? I don't care if he DOES have a point, he's an idiot for even saying what he said. He needs to learn how to keep his eyes to himself and then there wouldn't be any problems with working with women.

Besides, this man is a scientist, a Nobel Prize winning one at that. He should know DAMN well that anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence. How he can make these assertions without backing them up with actual statistical analysis is beyond me and really speaks to him just being sexist.

a reply to: JohnTheSmith

Does this not sound a little islamic? LOL seriously. I'm concerned at the very thought of segregation by sex.

I don't know. I haven't been around a lot of Muslims. I have been warned by a Catholic Nun to "leave space between the sexes for the Holy Spirit"!

a reply to: windword

Muslim women traditionally wear burqa's in public, so as not to 'excite' the men.

Just noting a similarity here.

a reply to: intrepid

Then I think he needs to check himself if he can't turn on a Bunsen burner without staring at a woman in a white coat and salivating like a Pavlovian mutt. Those things aren't exactly sexy. If he can't work without a "distraction" due to female presence then he has the problem not the system.

a reply to: systemic.aberration

Well thank goodness you took a rational approach to this...phew

How about he can have his opinion all he wants but he damn well better be prepared to face consequences of those opinions.

It isn't the same statement, but if a woman said all men should be removed from the lab because she can't focus due to their "distraction" then she ALSO needs to check herself.

Freedom of speech is intact. But making an ass out of yourself does not guarantee protection from your job, etc.

a reply to: windword

I ran across this article a couple of days ago:

The Cheerleader Effect: What Men Do to Impress
When women are present or when men are prompted to think about women, they act differently, research shows. Well, duh. But in unexpected ways. A 2008 study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology showed that in the mere presence of women as witnesses, men become more likely to jaywalk and to wait until the last second to dash on to a bus. This reflects, no doubt, the well-known belief among men that jaywalking means you're a Roman gladiator of irrepressible virility.
. . .
By contrast, these studies uniformly report that cues about males have no such effects on women.

Take something like medical profession: something like 5:1 female:male ratio. The heroic stance can be quite a strain, crazy even. Think of how many soap operas were set in hospitals! Drama, Melodrama!