- “Atena Farghadani is a 28-year-old Iranian artist. She was recently sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in prison for drawing a cartoon.”
- How to make sense of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP official accused of passing for black – Vox
- There is no comparison between transgender people and Rachel Dolezal | Meredith Talusan | Comment is free | The Guardian
- I pretty much never get tired of the cerulean sweater scene from The Devil Wears Prada. What scenes can you watch over and over? Provide a link, if you can.
- Decoded | Are Fried Chicken & Watermelon Racist? | MTV News – YouTube
- An Anti-Feminist Walks Into a Bar: A Play in Five Acts | Whatever
- Stop Trying to Make Conservative Feminism Happen – Amanda Marcotte
- Some people say that Hitler is never funny, but this cartoon totally cracked me up.
- Terminal Lance – Terminal Lance “Offended II” A cartoon by a vet responding to the “Caitlyn Jenner isn’t brave, soldiers are brave” meme. The essay following the cartoon is great.
- Comics Pro John Byrne Compares Transgender People to Pedophiles In Conversation With Fans On His Online Forum | The Mary Sue Byrne’s approach is as pure an example of JAQing off as I’ve ever seen.
- DC Comics’ Batgirl writers are rewriting one of their issues to remove transphobic art. I hope they did a good job of it.
- Speaking of transgender characters in comics, one of my favorite webcomics right now is the wonderful As The Crow Flies, by Melanie Gillman. Melanie has a Patreon to support this comic.
- 9 questions about gender identity and being transgender you were too embarrassed to ask – Vox“> This seems like a good basic FAQ to me, but of course, I’m cis, so there may be things I’m missing.
- How a new generation of activists is trying to make abortion normal – The Washington Post
- White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement –
- I’m in an Age-Gap Marriage, and Yes, Pairing Younger Actresses with Older Male Leads IS a Problem | The Mary Sue
- Should the dragons on ‘Game of Thrones’ have feathers?
- Caitlyn Jenner: transgender community has mixed reactions to Vanity Fair reveal
- Anti-Gay Pastor Rick Scarborough Says 40,000 People Will Go To Jail To Defy SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling| Gay News | Towleroad I think I’ve said this before, but I don’t understand how they think this will work – that is, how on earth does one get arrested in defiance of a pro-gay marriage ruling? Are they planning to trespass on same-sex wedding ceremonies until the cops drag them off the alter?
- Time for a New Suitcase: Airlines Want to Make Your Carry-On Bag Even Smaller
- On The Incident In McKinney, Texas, And The Black Girls Who Survive
- Military’s transgender ban based on bad medical science, say medical scientists
- Republican senator criticizes Obamacare on the grounds that Obamacare subsidies are awesome
- Voluntary Intoxication and Responsibility
- A Debate on Online Political Discourse — Medium This exchange between Freddie deBoer and the excelent Jay Caspian Kang was excellent. It’s refreshing to see deBoer disagreeing with someone without holding them in contempt. Via Veronica.
- New Evidence That Voter ID Laws are Racially Biased. The more white people in a state believe in racial stereotypes, the more likely that state is to have strict voter ID laws.
- How Automatic Voter Registration Would Change America The problem with this argument is that, even if people are automatically registered to vote, that doesn’t mean many of them will actually vote. I’m in favor of AVR, but I don’t think it’ll have large effects.
- Caitlyn Jenner is High Femme, Get Over It — Medium “The attacks on Jenner’s femininity represent transmisogyny and femmephobia because there is a glaring double standard here. You won’t hear a famous cisgender female movie actress accused of being too feminine or a stereotype for wearing a dress.”
- Ban Noncompete Agreements. Do It Now. Noncompete agreements being used to bully low-paid cashiers and the like – and that these agreements are in effect legal because no one expects them to be enforced with a lawsuit – is pretty disgusting.
- Arizona mosque invites armed anti-Muslim protestors, including a dude in a “Fuck Islam,” shirt, to join them in prayer.
- It’s Time To Bring Back Baby Cages: Gothamist (Link Via.)
Me:
Should have been “Connie St Louis”. I apologise for my error.
It is ridiculous over-the-top nonsense like this that prevents me from taking much of anything you say seriously. When you engage in paranoic demonization of your opponents, it really undercuts anything reasonable you may have said.
Daran,
Harlequin asked a straightforward question, in what reads, to me, as an attempt to better understand your point of view. Your reply consists entirely of questions. You’re certainly free to ask questions, but as you do, would you be willing to do Harlequin the courtesy of answering hers?
Grace
Daran,
See my quote of Deborah Blum quoting from the letter sent from the host organization of the event, castigating Tim Hunt for his inappropriate remarks and further castigating him for denying significantly after the fact that his jokes were sincerely meant, when he had been clear at the event that while he was joking, it is sincerely meant and he stood by what he said. See also his subsequent apology to his hosts, in which he does not dispute that.
In Tim Hunt’s case, some anonymous person who claims to have been there claims that he said “but seriously” after his joke and moved on to saying anodyne things about women scientists. That is in no way the equivalent of Shirley Sherrod’s speech in which she talked about how she once felt hostility towards white farmers, but quickly learned the error of her ways, where only an absurdly out of context quote made it offensive.
While it does indeed read like a hit piece, of small and non-random sample of facts I chose to check, every one was confirmed. Interestingly one of the documents they cited appears to have been memory-holed. I’m not sure when that happened.
You appear to have me confused with desipis. Harlequin’s questions were not directed at me.
The fullest version of Hunt’s remarks I have been able to find are as follows:
My operative assumption at this time is that this is an accurate paraphrase of what he said, if not a verbatim transcript. I base this assumption on the observation that it matches perfectly Hunt’s own account of his words, given before this “transcript” emerged, that the first paragraph matches perfectly the accounts given by St. Louis, Blum, and Oransky, and that both Blum and Oransky could not recall enough to confirm or deny the additional quotes in the second paragraph. This leaves St. Louis alone denying that Hunt said “Now seriously” and that he went on to praise female scientists and to encourage them to overcome the obstacles they face including “monsters like” the one he briefly pretended to be for purely rhetorical purposes.
So to answer Harlequin’s question:
It appears to be a grand total of two women (and one man) who appear to have misunderstood and misaprehended what he said.
Just to re-iterate, in a conversation with Deborah Blum immediately after his speech, in which Blum asked him about the prospect of segregated labs, Hunt confirmed that he believes it is “hard to collaborate with women because they are too emotional.” Not that his unexamined chauvinism makes him uniquely unsuited to working with women (as Dawkins is claiming), but that women make poor collaborators (presumably, with men).
It only appears that way if you ignore the letter from the host organization condemning his statements and pointing out that his “just a joke” excuse contradicted his explanatory statements at the lunch immediately after his short speech. If his statements to his fellow speaker and to members of the audience afterwards (that Mookie just noted) had matched the excuses people had made up after the fact, we would almost certainly not be having this discussion.
Absent a further explanation of that he was just parodying old, male Nobel prize winner hostility towards women, the second paragraph does not actually make up for the first paragraph. With his actual added explanation in the immediate aftermath (noted both by the host organization and by a Pulitzer prize winning beat reporter), before he was doing damage control, that he basically meant what he said, the second paragraph does even less to make up for the first.
Deborah Blum summarises Hunt’s point in a way that implies he has a general view that women are overly emotional.
However, Hunt had already clarified:
That is, he was talking specifically about his personal experiences and the romantic relationships between men and women cause problems. I.e. he was making a point acknowledging personal experience with the problem that modern approaches to sexual harassment attempt to resolve by discouraging workplace relationships, particularly where differential professional treatment might result. The quip about separate labs is a hyperbolic suggestion for dealing with the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace.
I can’t see a reasonable way to arrive at Blum’s interpretation based on the direct quotes of what Hunt as said.
Charles:
I do not think Hunt’s remarks were a joke or were even intended to be, if by “joke” we mean intended to evoke mirth. The “transcript” simply does not parse as funny. Rather I think he was using rhetorical irony to make a serious and heartfelt point. Namely that he completely acknowleges that female scientists face obstacles including the sexist attitudes of some men. It is in this sense that he truely said that his remarks were ‘rooted in “honesty”, not humour’
So why then did he later call it a “joke”? Because at this point he is beleaguered. He is in the middled of a media storm in which things he said ironically are being presented as though they were his actual views. He can’t deny that he said those things. He wants to explain that they were intended to be irony and in doing so, he used the word “joke”.
“Joke” was the wrong word. He shouldn’t have used it. But it’s not a capital offense that he did. And it’s very understandible given the position he found himself in.
Turning to the letter from the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations, the narrative presented is indistinguishable from the one advanced by St Louis, Blum, and Oransky. There is nothing to indicate that it was informed by any other person’s version of events than theirs.
Finally we have Blum’s twitter claim that Hunt “did think it was hard to collaborate with women because they are too emotional”. But Blum has admitted that she cannot recall whether Hunt did or did not say the second of the two paragraphs in the “transcript”, which completely reversed the meaning of the first. I have zero confidence in her ability to undersand and correctly render anything else she might have heard him say.
The Times claims to have seen what they call a “transcript” written by a EU official, whom they did not name, but who is presumably not anonymous. Are you suggesting the Times is lying?
It’s unfortunate that the “transcript” hasn’t been published, (though it may yet come to light). It’s unfortunate that the Times article is behind a paywall, and I am relient on reports in other reputable journals such as the Independent for its content.
It’s possible that these secondary reports have misrepresented the Times article. It’s possible that the Times is lying. It’s possible that the “transcript” is a forgery and the Times has been duped. It’s possible that it’s genuine in that it it was written by an EU official, who was present at the talk, but the official was intentionally or unintentionally inaccurate in his record of what Hunt actually said. All these things are possible, but none seem to be likely. Certainly I can discern no plausible motivation for why any of these source might intentionally misrepresent the next higher source. Nor can I imagine any plausible process by which the second paragraph of the “transcript” might have been conjured up by mistake.
It’s also possible that St Louis, Blum, and Oransky are lying, thay they concocted the entire affair for nafarious reasons alone. This also seems unlikely.
Here’s what I think actually happened. St Louis, Blum, and Oransky were so appalled at what they thought Hunt was saying that they simply stopped processing his further remarks which reversed their meaning. Because they did not register those further remarks, they did not remember having heard them. Because she did not remember them, St Louis erroniously concluded that he did not say them.
I didn’t claim that it was equivalent, rather that there were parallels.
Sherrod did hold offensive views, albeit she’d moved past them at the time she made her speech. If we accept the two paragraph transcript as accurate, there’s no indication that Hunt ever held the the offensive views that he ironically attributed to himself and which he’s now accused of holding. I agree that these are not equivalent.
I’m having a hard time accepting as reasonable or fair the notion that Hunt should be reinstated to his ECL post, even if his remarks were entirely jocular. He himself characterized his comments as “stupid and ill-judged“; the scientists who heard them (cf ibid) found them “a great disappointment” causing them “concern and regret,” and they object to western media portraying the speech as “a private story told as a joke.” Multiple independent witnesses confirm the original account of the “toast” and its effect on the audience. Some fellow science communicators — which is what ECL had Hunt signed on to do, to be trotted out at fancy dos to make a few pleasant speeches — agree that such jokes are baffling non-sequiturs most of the time (why choose to address a group of female scientists with jokes about how one is a caveman, ha ha ha?), counter-productive and unnecessarily insulting the rest.
Jacques Rousseau poses the question: “why should UCL want him in an honorary position?”
He’s clearly a poor, overly defensive, self-involved communicator who has to make even totally benign speeches all about himself. (Michael Eisen characterized an early keynote speech he witnessed as containing “more than a bit of the usual amount of narcissism.”) He’s mentioned that his nerves got the better of him at Seoul. He has been unable to apologize for his jokes without making further incendiary remarks, compounding the mistakes rather than acknowledging, clarifying, and apologizing.
He’s good at science, as his Nobel will attest. He should stick to that, or to retirement. I can’t see why anybody would want him advocating for them, speaking on behalf of scientists, reaching out to as a titled and highly awarded member of the status quo to members of underserved or underrepresented communities when he can’t manage such a simple task without such a dramatic flub and then a double-down.
If he believes that women are too emotional or too prone to falling in love or too sexually distracting to make worthy colleagues, he (a) has a problem with women that can’t be solved and (b) believes men can’t control themselves; this doesn’t make him a monster or necessarily a bad scientist, but it does make him a spectacularly unsuitable choice as an honorary ambassador and, in many people’s eyes (including mine) an intellectual dinosaur and a bigot. Too controversial to do worthy institutions any good. It doesn’t make sense to force them to keep him and it’s rather disingenuous of people like Dawkins to pretend they don’t understand this.
Me:
Blum claimes to have received a letter written by a KFWSTA official, whom she did not name but who is presumably not anonymous.
The two-paragraph “transcript” quote, which supports Hunt, comes to us via the Times, an independent party. It’s author claims to have been present at the talk. The text of the letter, which supports Blum et al, comes to us via Blum. It’s author makes no such claim.
Edit: upon rereading, I see she says it was sent to Hunt, not to her.
Why should more credence be given to the letter than to the “transcript”?
And now you’ve moved into Poe’s Law territory. Do you really believe that that is a reasonable characterization of anything, or are you just trolling?
I don’t care to find out. I’m out of this discussion.
As I pointed out, there is nothing in the letter to indicate that its author heard Hunt’s remarks directly. It is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that it was responding to the version of events advanced by St. Louis et al.
I can see one, Charles Siefe, who claimed he gave a “detailed account of the toast”, which I cannot find anywhere. He also claims that Hunt did not say “Now seriously”. He’s also revealed that the EU official was Marcin Monco.
I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Seife took any notes. Assuming honesty on both their parts, it seem’s more likely that Seife doesn’t remember everything that Hunt did say, than Monko inadvertently fabricated something that Hunt didn’t.
This is clearly a rapidly developing story. I’m willing to shift my position in the light of any new information that might emerge.
I never troll, and I have absolutely no idea what you think is so unreasonable about what I said.
I’m left with the vague suspicion that you’ve misread or misunderstood me, but I’ve no idea what you think I said or why, and since you’ve not seen fit to tell me anything useful, I guess I never will.
By now it is clear that they were either careless in their wording, or misinformed, or lying. According to Siefe:
So let’s stop calling it a “transcript,” please. It was an after-the-fact reconstruction – and we don’t even know how far after the fact. (It’s possible that the report was put together after Monko had read various accounts of the event, including Hunt’s).
I’m not sure what on earth this even means. The letter is a statement of the official opinion of KOFWST; it should be given credence on that point because the letter is, in fact, from KOFWST.
I really don’t see any point in going any further down the “did he or didn’t he say “but seriously…” rabbit hole, because it really doesn’t matter. The comment reads to me like a “it’s funny because it has truth in it” sort of humorous statement. It reads that way with or without the “but seriously.”
There’s strong evidence, in what Tim Hunt said afterward, that he did indeed mean what he said, to a significant degree. According to the BBC, Hunt later explained:
Hunt was clearly standing by his statements at the conference.
In a different interview (that Mookie has linked twice this thread), Deborah Blum asked Hunt to clarify what he meant.
(Desipis wrote, “I can’t see a reasonable way to arrive at Blum’s interpretation based on the direct quotes of what Hunt as said.” But Blum wasn’t basing it on the Hunt quote Desipis referred to – Blum was basing it on what Hunt said to her, in response to a direct question, and she says that at least one other person witnessed this exchange.)
These are all statements that it is reasonable both to report and to criticize.
I actually agree there was a germ of good intentions and good faith in what Hunt said. But, not too surprisingly, he only barely scratched the surface in relating the problem and its effects, and he delivered his message to entirely the wrong audience. Women don’t need to be told that science has a diversity problem, and especially not by a man who happily admits to being guilty of treating women differently and underestimating their competence (can’t take criticism, too touchy and prone to fweelings) and whose salient remarks were mostly devoted to explaining it away as an insoluble dilemma of “sex” that requires female understanding rather than any effort on the part of a man (whom, he reminds us, cannot really change his spots). It only reflected badly on European scientists that an acclaimed member of their cohort broached the topic so crudely and so hamfistedly. Has Hunt any history or background in this topic? Or was it all he could think of to talk about, to a roomful of women?
What does it say about a person’s judgment and professionalism that he thought his jokes appropriate? That an audience of female scientists would be less interested in science than in (bad and amateur) sociology? That they would benefit from his insight into sexism? That they would smile and shake their head fondly as he admitted his weaknesses but put the responsibility for changing him solely in the hands of women (who cry, who love, who are teh sexy — men either do none of these things or it’s different and less erotic when they do For Reasons)? These certainly aren’t the words and actions of a scientist respectfully addressing his peers, but of an ad agency trying to sell laundry soap to women by explaining that cleaning the family drawers is a prestigious job only a woman could manage because men are too stupid and incompetent to do it correctly.
Eta: I’ve just realized I’ve been referring to the ERC as ECL. I have no idea why, and I’m sorry about that.
I disagree. The lunch was hosted by the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations and the letter was written by them. It would be preposterous to suggest that no members of the association attended their own lunch, and (according to the published translation) the letter makes that quite clear when it says “[a]s women scientists we were deeply shocked and saddened by these remarks…” (emphasis added)
It does matter, because he was misreported. Look, you are all going off as if it were Woodward & Bernstein reporting this, with additional contributions from Seymour Hersh. Um… no. What actually happened is he spoke to the women’s section of the World Conference of Science Journalists.
This is how my suspicious about accuracy were first aroused; I can’t think of a more awful combination than science and feminist journalism. One lot are notorious for not letting the underlying science get in the way of producing sensationalised X causes/cures cancer articles in alternate weeks, the other are currently making a habit of churning out advocacy journalism about fictitious rapes.
It is literally these people’s job to stir up drama. Everyone in that room knows their paycheck and expense claim relies on bullshit and outrage. And – to be fair – we got some great Hearstian journalism. They could have produced a dull-as-ditchwater piece about cyclins; but instead they captured the minds of thousands, made frontpages and got a story that ran for weeks generating millions of clicks by cynically manufacturing a crisis through misreporting. You have to realise you are being exploited by the yellow press.
What the hell kind of bizarre fever dream are you in right now? Wow.
I think “bizarre fever dream” is too much of a personal attack – please find a way of responding that’s attacking what was said, not the author. Thanks.
But I agree, what Pete wrote was entirely ridiculous, and also shows the way that many people constantly demonize feminists.
Pete: If you’re going to be that unreasonable, you’re gong to have to find someplace else to post your comments.
* * *
I just saw this on Tumblr, courtesy of Ben, and thought “this is funny, I should quote it on the open thread,” but then thought “wait, if I quote it on the open thread, everyone will think I quoted it specifically as a comment about Tim Hunt, and that’s not my intention,” but then I thought, “Fuck it.”
I wrote:
On second thought, it is extremely likely the report was written after he’d already read and heard various accounts of the event, because no one would have asked him to write up such a report before the controversy broke.
Out of curiosity, is there a single person from the “we don’t want to be called anti-feminist even though virtually every public word we write about feminism is an attack on feminism” side, who has objected to Tim Hunt being pressured to resign, who has also publicly objected to the ongoing movement to get Irene Gallo fired?
(ETA: I realize that many people may be aware of one controversy but unaware of the other.)
You’re right – my apologies to both you and Pete.
Ampersand:
Me, on Irene Gallo:
Daran:
Yes and no. I was referencing the reply you directed to Harlequin at 98, and assumed incorrectly that she was replying to you in in 82, when I see now that she was replying to desipis.
Grace
Well put. And just to add another layer, this was at a conference held in a non-Western country, in which English is not the first language: i.e., an event in which cultural differences (including those regarding, say, humor, and, say, gender?) are likely to be something that a good speaker should be concerned with.
A speaker who tries to deploy a tricky kind of ironic, self-referential humor in front of such an audience, humor which perhaps is meant to appear to insult the audience but actually insults the speaker, is not a very good speaker at all. (Perhaps a minimum of care would be to run the intro by someone from the host organization, and say “do you think this will play well to your audience?”) And not someone I’d want on my roster of people to trot out as honorary representatives.
Black Sociology Prof Fired For Tweets About Confederate Flag, White Supremacy |
If science/feminist journalism is so amazing, please explain how the hell this happened? Surely you would agree that the most basic journalistic job
iswas to accurately report someone’s speech. How the hell is this even in doubt after the guy spoke to a roomful of journalists? How the hell do we have three journalism Profs going off on this, all working from memory with not one of whom performing the most basic task of making contemporaneous notes? That not one person in that room could knock up a clear article that evening laying out accurately the basic facts of the matter is damning. Of course, modern journalism is actually about click generation, and they did a great job there.For the benefit of those who merely read Ampersand’s link, and didn’t click through, or who clicked through before the post was updated, it now appears that she wasn’t fired after all, but left voluntarily in order to take up another position.
Voluntarily or “voluntarily?”
Pete:
From Connie St Louis’ article:
Although I guess there’s some wiggle room there, the most obvious interpretation of this is that St Louis, Blum and Oransky all independently took contemporaneous notes, which matched up.
On the other hand, the claim that the quotes they attribute to Hunt are a misrepresentation, are based mostly on the so-called “transcript” made by Monko, who doesn’t appear (from what we currently know) to have taken contemporaneous notes. And who says it wasn’t a transcript. (It was also based on Hunt’s own after-the-fact – and iirc, after the story had blown up – recollection.)
Thanks, Daran. Obviously, at the time I pasted in that URL, the updates had not yet appeared.
Voluntarily, without quotes.
But pay attention to the word ‘appears’ in my comment. When Ampersand posted the link, it appeared that she has been fired. At least one of these appearences must, as a matter of logic, be misleading. Perhaps both are.
As someone on the “Every time I advocate for gender equality in feminist spaces, I get called an antifeminist. Go figure” side, I guess this question was directed at me as well as desipis.
I haven’t commented on the Gallo matter at all. However a careful reading of my comments in this thread would reveal that I haven’t objected to Hunt being pressured to resign either. My initial comment on this matter expressed frustration at how you and others were addressing the issue. Since then we’ve been discussing whether, on the basis of the available information it’s reasonable to believe Hunt’s version of events or St Louis’, issues which haven’t arisen AFAIK in Gallo’s case.
I remember you putting up a post about it, to which I turned when I saw this comment to remind myself what the issue was.
This appears to strongly support the facts in St. Louis’ article.
The facts in St Louis article aren’t in dispute. What is disputed is whether or not there are additional facts (“but seriously…”) which might reasonably reverse how one interpretates the undisputed facts.
I see nothing in Plait’s summary that I did not already know. Moreover Plait himself omits significant facts. For example, while he points out that Seife denied that Hunt said “but seriously…”, he fails to mention the existance of so-called ‘so-called transcript’, thus relieving himself of the burden of explaining how, if Hunt had never gone on to make these additional remarks, another witness could have recorded him doing so.
Similarly in arguing that Blum’s account of her subsequent conversation with Hunt indicates that he really does hold sexist views, he fails to mention that she could not recall enough to confirm of deny the additional quotes from Sir Tim, which suggests that she’s not particularly reliable as a reporter of other people’s speech.
Despite omitting relevent facts, Plait goes on at length about irrelevent matters. That the Daily Mail is a shitty yellow rag has no bearing whatsoever on the question of what Hunt actually said, and what he meant by his words.
Ampersand:
What facts lead you to conclude that “Monko … doesn’t appear (from what we currently know) to have taken contemporaneous notes”?
The claim that the quotes are a misrepresentation are based upon Monko’s SCT, Hunt’s after-the-fact recollection, and the fact that these two match up in every particular. That it wasn’t a verbatim transcript doesn’t have the significance Hunt’s detractors seem to think it does. What matters is whether the SCT accurately captured the sense of Hunt’s speech.
Those who would dismiss the SCT have the problem of explaining how and why Monko created a report of the speech which, in its first disclosed paragraph matches every other witnesses’ account in every respect, but which in its second disclosed paragraph is just made-up shit, shit which somehow magically matches up with Hunt’s own after-the-fact made-up shit.
But, that would be impossible for Plait to do, to “explain” something that didn’t happen: nobody “recorded” anything or took contemporaneous notes. There are reconstructions from memory, only, some through collaboration and others individually.
Well, no. Not at all. No one but Mońko is obligated (and in a prime position) to explain anything, or to prove that his is the “real” (one, true) “transcript.” He can share those contemporaneous handwritten notes you are suggesting exist, if he’d like. But he hasn’t. And the European Commission, whom he is representing, have made it plain that they don’t consider his recollections a transcript. Charles Seife asked Mońko directly and reported the response in two tweets.
Given that reports of his version submitted to The Times didn’t emerge until after St. Louis, Blum, Seife, Oransky, and others had widely published their own recollections, it’s not particularly surprising that some sections now match word-for-word, as Amp has now noted twice. Was his report filed with the EC beforehand? Is that likely? Has anyone involved said or suggested so?
What reported facts lead you to this conclusion?
I agree with Ampersand when he said:
On the other hand, I haven’t seen anything which would indicate one way or the other whether Monke’s SCT was based upon contempranious notes or reconstructed from memory. If you have, please point to it.
But even if reconstructed there is still a problem. How could Monke have “reconstructed from memory” Hunt’s remarks from “But seriously…” onward, substantially identical to what Hunt later claimed he had said, if Hunt did not in fact say these things? How is it that Hunt’s made-up shit and Monke’s made-up shit match in every detail?
Everything I just linked to. Again, the onus is on you to prove that someone, anyone, transcribed Hunt’s speech as he gave it, or has claimed to do so. Then that person has to provide evidence that they did.
It’s the other way round. You have to prove what you’re arguing, which conflicts with everything that has been reported.
First, there’s no evidence that they do. No one has access to the EC report but the EC and The Times. Secondly, the report wasn’t given to The Times to read until after Hunt was asked about what he said (which, by the by, he doesn’t deny). As Amp suggests, the report appears to be a compendium of all known information. No transcript, nothing verbatim. This a spokesperson for the EC specifically has said.
Neither has anyone else AFAICS, including St louis, Blum and Oransky. Seife claims to have Given a detailed account of the toast, but if it’s been published anywhere, I haven’t been able to find it.
In any case, I’m not suggesting that Mońko took detailed contempranious notes, handwritten or otherwise. All I’m suggesting is that Mońko’s account is independent of Hunt’s after-the-fact claims.
Not that I know of. On the other hand, nobody involved has claimed that the report was written after the others had published their own recollections, or that it was based upon their recollections and not the writer’s own memory/notes.
Your theory, if I understand it correctly is that Mońko took Hunt’s after-the-fact claims about what he had said, and falsely claimed in his report that he said these things at the time? Or that the report accurately attributes the second paragraph to Hunt’s after-the-fact claims, but the Times misrepresented what the report says? Is that likely? Has anyone involved said or suggested so?
Um, no. It’s your responsibility to support your claims, not mine to refute them. I haven’t made any claim about whether Mońko did or did not take contempranious notes. I don’t know whether he did or he didn’t. In respect of St Louis, Blum, and Oranski, St Louis wrote:
I read that as claiming that she broke the story after discussing it with her colleagues. If so then it means that each of them had written down what they had heard Hunt say within three hours of the end of the lunch. She refered to these written notes as “quotes”.
I don’t know how soon after he spoke the words the notes would have had to have been taken to qualify as “contempranious”. I guess that’s a matter of semantics. But whatever the time limit, I cannot see how you can confidently assert that they weren’t written soon enough.
No, it’s you who has to support what you’re arguing. I’m not arguing anything. All I’m saying is that I don’t know.
Nothing has been reported as far as I can see about whether the quotes from Mońko’s report were based upon contempranious notes or not. The only thing that has been said is that they are “not a verbatim transcript” which says nothing whatsoever about contempraniousness.
The spokesperson and Mońko have both said that it was “not a verbatim transcript”. That’s not a claim that there is “nothing verbatim”, only that the entirety is not claimed to be verbatim, i.e., not claimed to be word-for-word accurate. Neither Mońko nor the spokesperson has argued that the report is not substantively accurate, or that it is “a compendium of all known information”.
I agree that there is a lot of uncertainty about the report. It’s frustrating that it hasn’t been published or otherwise come into the public domain. It’s frustrating that neither Mońko nor the spokesperson have been particularly forthcoming about it. It’s frustrating that the Times article is behind a paywall and I haven’t been able to find a copy of it anywhere else.
But I cannot see how you can argue that the quote “Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.” is derived from Hunt’s after-the-fact claims unless one of the following is true:
1. The report misrepresents the status of that quote,
2. The Times misrepresents the status that the report gives to that quote, or
3. Every other news report not behind a paywall, commenting upon the Times article misrepresents what the Times said.
None of these seem to be particularly likely IMO, and there’s no evidence AFAICS to support any of them.
I’m going away with my band to a music festival, so won’t be able to post again until next week. In any case, unless some genuinely new information comes to light, I think I’m done with this discussion.
My position is as follows:
It is not disputed by anyone present at the lunch that Hunt said something substantively equivalent to “It’s strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. 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. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?”. Whether or not this is a verbatim quote is immaterial.
Based upon everything I’ve read, it seems more likely than not that Hunt went on to say something substantively equivalent to (if not a verbatim quote) “Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.” I’m not certain that he did, and I might revise my view in the light of new information.
If he did say this, then it’s a clear indicator that his earlier “chauvinistic” remarks were rhetorical irony, and not an expression of his sincerly expressed views. Even if he did not, his description of himself as a “chauvinist monster” is still an indicator that his remarks were intended to be irony.
In respect of what he really thinks about women in science, I give more weight to the views of many women scientists who have spoken up to say that they known and worked with him for years, than I do to one journalist’s interpretation of a conversation she had with him after the lunch.
I agree that his comments were gauche, unfunny, and that they offended many. I do not find it surprising that he made gauche, unfunny remarks which were misunderstood and that people took offense. His Nobel prize was for medicine, not public-speaking. It was because of his achievements in science, not public-speaking, that he was appointed to various honerary positions and it seems unfair that he was forced to resign from them based upon remarks taken out of context.
“Similarly in arguing that Blum’s account of her subsequent conversation with Hunt indicates that he really does hold sexist views, he fails to mention that she could not recall enough to confirm of deny the additional quotes from Sir Tim, which suggests that she’s not particularly reliable as a reporter of other people’s speech.”
This is backwards. That Blum does not claim to remember the exact wording of what she didn’t write down demonstrates that she is reliable as a reporter. That she doesn’t remember the exact wording of a part of the speech that didn’t strike her as important at the time (as we can tell since she stopped taking notes at that point) also does not reasonably impeach her ability to remember the gist of a conversation that she knew at the time was important. Even if she didn’t take notes about that conversation (and we have no reason to think she didn’t), she wrote about it much closer to the event than when she was asked about whether he had said “but seriously” after the part she wrote down.
I agree that we really don’t know how accurate Monko’s description is (maybe it is perfectly accurate and Seife is misremembering that detail), and we don’t know if his memory was influenced by reading Hunt’s account of the event (it would certainly explain why something that is “not a transcript” matches so perfectly with Hunt’s description), but I think your characterization of someone misremembering something because they have been exposed to a description of that thing as “Monke’s made-up shit” is silly and a gross mischaracterization of what Amp and Mookie have been describing.
“Your theory, if I understand it correctly is that Mońko took Hunt’s after-the-fact claims about what he had said, and falsely claimed in his report that he said these things at the time?”
You are misunderstanding the argument severely. No one has suggested that Monko is lying about anything, or that his statement is not his best recollection of what he heard.
People of good will attempting to bear witness to what they have observed constantly misremember things and conflate what they heard later with what they heard at the time. That’s why for fine details contemporaneous notes are so important and judicious people are very cautious about claiming to be certain of remembering details. That’s why witness testimony in court cases is often completely wrong, particularly from people who didn’t realize what they were observing at the time was important (which may or may not describe Monko).
@Charles S: Yes. This is a well-established phenomenon.
Lost in the Mall Technique
Here is a report claiming that Prof. Hunt was simply making a joke and that numerous male and female scientists perceived it as such at the time.
Regarding that Cathy Young article Ron just linked to, there’s something there that’s typical of the genre of anti-feminist discussion of the Hunt case: There’s almost no blame cast on the institutions that pressured Hunt to resign. The blame goes, not on the people who (according to Hunt and his wife) told Hunt to resign or be fired. Rather, Cathy’s interest, and blame, is cast mainly on the people who reported Hunt’s words. (And even Cathy seems to believe the reporters were honest, although possibly mistaken).
I do blame the institutions that pressured Hunt to resign; that should not be the go-to response to an incident like this. Furthermore, it happened far too quickly for me to believe that it represented a thought-out and considered response, rather than a knee-jerk reaction.
The choice to focus on slamming a couple of openly feminist reporters who committed the terrible, awful sin of reporting on something a famous scientist said in public, rather than slamming the actual-decision makers, is why I think Cathy and similar writers are engaging in culture war – not out of some nefarious plotting, but purely out of knee-jerk reactions – rather than actually objecting to people being pressured to resign because of things they said in public.
I really doubt that most of the writers complaining about Hunt’s case would say a word in defense of a leftist professor who was being pressured to resign, unless they were directly cornered about it.
Numerous audience members don’t care whether it was a joke or not.
UCL has issued a second statement, reaffirming the decision to accept Hunt’s resignation and reiterating that this resolution is considered, on both sides, to be the most satisfactory, given the circumstances.
UCL President and Provost Arthur explains in greater detail why he believes Hunt’s remarks, before and after his speech in Seoul, render him an unsuitable ambassador and spokesperson for the university, particularly in light of the publication last year of a comprehensive plan to increase the diversity of its faculty and recruit more students from traditionally underrepresented communities:
Regardless of whether they found Hunt’s remarks offensive or innocuous, fellow honorary members and current UCL faculty appear to agree that Hunt is seen to have advocated against or undermined one of the university’s stated goals, to achieve parity with comparable universities in terms of female faculty.
Again, Hunt seems offputtingly out of touch, neither conversant with methods for achieving nor particularly invested in reaching these goals. As an honorary fellow, it is his brief to be both and to communicate these ideas well and forcefully (or to say nothing on the subject, about which he seems to know nothing and has never seriously contemplated, and to stick to science). A brief, digressive non-sequitur about the trials and tribs of having to work with sexy and emotionally fragile female scientists within a talk called “Creative Science — Only a Game?” is simply not constructive in this context; it actively undermines a project UCL has gone to great lengths to trumpet. Attributing “blame,” then, to the university for wishing to sever professional ties with someone who opposes or does not understand some of their fundamental values, strikes me as too forceful.
Could UCL or Hunt be content to remain closely associated after a series of small public gaffes reveal that Hunt does not take diversity seriously, finds nothing wrong with a scarcity of women among faculty and students? Probably, but that would require Hunt to make a substantive and meaningful apology, and he doesn’t appear to have been willing or interested in doing so. In that case, I don’t see the egregious crime UCL have committed.
Had Hunt not immediately and repeatedly reaffirmed his negative feelings about female scientists, had he not hastily chaffed at mild criticism and pushback, had he not complained about journalists doing their job and being mean, I should think UCL would have been quite eager to collaborate with him on a short, measured statement. In a way, it could have been a great boon for both, one of those lovely, heart-warming PR moments about a well-meaning man acknowledging the perniciousness of sexism in a field he loves and is devoted to.
I’m less interested in Bulverising Young than in seeing whether her post contains any new (or new to me) information or arguments. It turns out it does, in that she cites another witness I wasn’t aware of until now. Demina’s tweet predates by two days the earliest published claim by Hunt I have been able to find in which he claims to have followed his “joke” remarks with praise for women, prefaced with “now seriously…”, Demina’s tweet, therefore, cannot have been influenced by it, yet it fits the “now seriously…” narrative perfectly.
I’ve also found this post by Louise Mensch which is devastating to the narative promulgated by St Louis et al. I’m not talking about the photographs, which prove diddly-squat. I’m talking about the European Research Council President’s statement and subsequent correspondance with Mensch, as well as the numerous other witness accounts that Mensch has collected which contradict her account in various ways I appreciate that Mensch’s snarky tone and at one point outright verbal abuse directed at Blum will likely rub people here up the wrong way, but that in no way undermines the evidence she has compiled.
I’ve just posted two versions of a comment, both of which never showed. Presumably they were both spammed.
Could a mod kindly retrieve the second of the two. Cheers.
[Done. –Amp]
I’ve also found a cached copy of the paywalled Times article which first disclosed the existence of the So-Called Transcript (SCT). Here’s what it says, in relevent part:
So the SCT does indeed purport to be a “transcript … as precise as [the author] can recall it” “Transcript” is not a word applied to it solely by commentators.
There is no contradiction here with Mońko’s remark that it is not a “verbatim transcript” if you understand the latter as asserting only that he is not guaranteeing it to be 100% word-for-word accurate. On the other hand, the word “transcript” used in the report does seem to imply that the author thinks it reasonably accurate. It’s a strange word for someone with an ordinary memory to use if he was merely recalling verbal remarks between ten and twelve days after they were made.
Yet that is what we are being asked to believe – without evidence – if we are to accept the “based upon Hunt’s remarks” hypothesis advanced by Ampersand and others.
I wonder if Caudet is the unnamed female spokesperson who ‘told The Independent that the new leaked transcript forms part of a “mission report compiled by an official” and is not being treated as a verbatim transcript.’ If so, then she did have further comment.
So there you have it. This is a close as we get to the content of the SCT. Every other account of it AFAICS has been based entirely, or nearly so, upon this article.
I didn’t Bulverise Young, which would be an argument which solely relied on the identity or motive of the speaker to suggest that their argument was wrong.
I said she was wrong because she’s casting blame upon the people who were not the people who (allegedly) told Hunt resign or be fired. It makes more sense to blame the people who (allegedly) pressured Hunt to resign, then it does to blame reporters who were not, by anyone’s account, the ones who told Hunt “resign or be fired.” (In fact, I don’t believe there is even an instance of the reporters calling for Hunt to resign or be fired, although if I’m mistaken about that I’d be interested to know it.)
In addition to that, I also – I think rightly – suggested that Cathy’s rather obvious bias was the source of her error. But the argument that one should blame the actors, not the reporters, would be just as true even if I hadn’t said a word about her motives, or even mentioned who she was. So no, not Bulverism.
As for Mensch’s article that you linked to, I was very impressed that Mensch linked to the radio interview in which Hunt himself said that the quote (presumably meaning St Louis’ quote) was accurate, but Mensch didn’t mention that fact at all, even to refute it. I think that Mensch’s reporting establishes that people came away from the event with differing interpretations of if Hunt was joking, and how the room reacted. But I don’t think it establishes anything more than that.
And – again – it really doesn’t matter to me if it was a joke or not, or if some people in the room chuckled or not.
I myself think that Hunt was “joking,” in the sense that he was attempting to be wry and funny. (There’s where I disagree with St Louis’ interpretation). But, like a lot of jokes, he was attempting to use humor to illustrate what he believes to be underlying truths, as he said more than once in the days immediately following the event. Nothing about him following his joke with “but seriously,” if he did (and Demina’s tweet contains no confirmation of that phrase at all) changes that.
Bottom line: It was an inappropriate and sexist joke to tell in that environment, and criticizing Hunt for that joke is appropriate.
Mookie, thanks for the links, and for your comments.
I take your point. If one thinks the University did the right thing, “praise” might be a better word than “blame.” But in either case, it was the University who was the primary actor in pressuring Hunt to resign (assuming the account given by Hunt’s wife is accurate).
Regarding those who think it was wrong that Hunt was pressured to resign, however, I think it’s fair to point out that it would be more logical to blame those who actually did the pressuring, rather than focusing ire on the reporters (particularly the two female reporters) and on Twitter feminists. However, the overwhelming majority of the “Hunt was the victim of a lynching” writing I’ve read has done the opposite. I think that’s noteworthy.
I’m not sure where your information about what the brief of an honorary Professor is? If you’re right, and it’s the official duty of honorary professors to represent the views of the University and be presentable in public, then that does justify asking Hunt to resign much more than otherwise. However, it’s been my (perhaps mistaken) impression that an “honorary Professor” is a title given to a former Professor who has retired but who gets the “honorary” title in recognition of exceptional contributions as a professor.
But in any case, I’m bothered by (if Hunt and his wife’s accounts are accurate) Hunt being pressured to resign within a day, and before there had been a face-to-face meeting with Hunt in which Hunt had a chance to present his side at length, followed by a careful, deliberative discussion. Even if I agreed with the decision to ask Hunt to resign, I could not agree with the process by which that decision was made.
It’s important that Universities take a stand against sexism in STEM, including remarks like Hunt’s. However, I don’t think it’s important that such a stand take the form of a “resign or be fired” demand, and I don’t think it’s important that such a stand take place in less than 24 hours and without a thorough clarification and gathering of facts regarding what happened, and without hearing Hunt’s side directly. I’m not saying a yearlong investigation is needed, but surely taking more than a day – and giving Hunt a chance to talk directly to the University authorities – is reasonable.
I certainly agree with you that Hunt’s statement (whether or not it was a joke) was inappropriate and sexist, and that such jokes are harmful.
I think they should have been willing to do so regardless. More to the point, I think they should have worked much harder to reach that outcome, even if it meant taking a few extra days. I don’t think Hunt said anything that he couldn’t have refuted or walked back (in ways similar to how he has in fact walked back his statements).
It is largely because Hunt was (he claims) forced to resign that this story has had such enormous staying power. I think it might well have been better for everyone, including upcoming female scientists, if the university had offered to allow him to keep his title if he’d issue a “it was a joke that came off badly, and I apologize” statement without a resignation. (Combined, I think, with a private request to Hunt that he cease speaking publicly at “women in science” type events).
I also just think it’s bad for employers to jump quickly to firing people for their public speech. It sets a bad precident, imo. Of course, Hunt wasn’t “fired,” because it wasn’t a paid job – but he was stripped of an honorary title, which is close enough to firing to make me uncomfortable. Anything that normalizes the belief that firing is an acceptable first resort in response to speech, contributes to a trend that is harmful to a culture of free speech.
By which I meant “…that Mensch has collected with contradict St Louis’ account…”
Thanks for retrieving the comment.
In the UK “Professor” is a considerably more prestigious title than in the US, where, if I understand it correctly, it means little more than “lecturer”. In the UK a non-hourary Professor would likely be the head of a university faculty or department.
“Honourary Professor” is I would think a commensurately more prestigious title, presumably awarded for his exception contributions as a research scientist. There is no mention in his wiki bio of his ever having been a non-honourary professor. His wife is.
Here’s a transcript of the recorded message Hunt left for the BBC’s “Today” show before he headed back to the UK. I don’t know if this is the full statement, or if the BBC did any editing.
Although Hunt later somewhat disclaimed this statement, it’s notable that:
1) Shortly after the event, Hunt was defending the substance of his statement that “when you criticize [women], they cry.” It’s extremely reasonable to infer from this that Hunt, although he meant his remarks to be lighthearted and ironic, also believed that his statements reflected an underlying truth.
2) Shortly after the event, Hunt said “what I said was quite accurately reported.”
3) Shortly after the event, Hunt stated that his remarks were “interpreted deadly seriously by my audience.”
In light of this, I think it’s entirely reasonable that people took Hunt to be to a significant degree stating his true beliefs (albeit perhaps in a humorous fashion); that people have accepted the reporting of Hunt’s statements as accurate; and that people in the audience at the time did, indeed, interpret what Hunt said seriously.
Of course, it’s possible that Hunt misspoke incredibly badly when he left this recording for the BBC – he was obviously flustered, and probably in a rush. But it’s also possible that he was accurately stating his beliefs at the time, and later his recollection of what had happened adjusted in ways that tend to make him look better. (A process that does not require deliberate deception.)
I think a lot of US professors would very strongly disagree with that; however, I wonder if “lecturer” is a more prestigious position in the UK than in the US (where a “lecturer” is a title significantly below “professor”).
That aside, however, yes, if only a head of department would be called a Professor in the UK, then Professor is indeed a more prestigious title there than it is here.
Adding to the cultural mismatch, in the US there are several different ranks of professor. Adjunct professors have very little prestige, Junior Professors a little more, and being a Full Professor is prestigious, although how much prestige also depends on which college one is a professor at.
(Or that’s my understanding; I’m sure that other Americans here with more academic background than me would know more.)
Tim Hunt’s findings in lab disproved as stress expert says men cry more at work | World news | The Guardian
The headline is misleading. The research cited found that male therapists cried more often during sessions than female therapists – a finding that might or might not apply to lab scientists. Also, the researcher also said that a forthcoming study of doctors and nurses is likely to find that female doctors and nurses cry more at the workplace than their male counterparts. If so, then it becomes even harder to generalize from these findings to any other occupation.
I’m quoting this because it’s interesting, but I’ve never looked at this research and have no idea how solid it is. I tend to be skeptical of the “hormones” explanation without more context for what he means. But my anecdotal impression is that he’s certainly right about social expectations being a major factor for why many men find it difficult to cry in front of other people.
I can confirm that it is edited. I don’t know if this is the BBC’s doing.
I know this, because by a remarkable coincidence I have just prepared a transcript of This fragment of Hunt’s statement. (I don’t know if the audio can be recieved outside the UK.)
Take a close look at that last sentence. It’s not just word-for-word identical to the end of your version. If you listen to it, the tone, the timing, and the ums and ers match identically. It is the same utterance. Yet it appears to imediately follow two different utterances in our respective transcripts.
Thanks for confirming that what I transcribed was not the complete statement, and for providing an additional bit. I find it frustrating that (as far as I can find) the BBC has not posted a complete transcript online.
I think that adding your bit to what I transcribed, if anything, strengthens the point I was making, particularly the first point (“It’s extremely reasonable to infer from this that Hunt, although he meant his remarks to be lighthearted and ironic, also believed that his statements reflected an underlying truth.”)
You may recall how thrilled River Song was in “Time of Angels” to learn from the Doctor that she would one day be a Professor.
By the way if you ever suspect there’s a specifically British (or Scottish) cultural reference in Doctor Who you’re not understanding, feel free to ask.
Me:
Correction, those last two sentences, as I’m sure you realised.
Ampersand:
You won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t agree with your interpretation of his remarks, or that your point has been strenghened. Of course, I realised that you would think it had been.
That doesn’t really concern me. If I discover new information that seems relevent, I will bring it to the table, regardless of whose position it strenghens or weakens.
As someone who has been part of both American and British academic department, let me give a quick translation guide to job titles.
U.S. Assistant professor = UK lecturer
U.S. Associate professor = UK senior lecturer
U.S. Full professor = UK professor
The UK doesn’t have a clear category that maps onto “adjunct professor” or us “lecturer” – institutions still employ them, but they can be called a variety of things. In my own institution, adjuncts used to be called “teaching fellows” but now are called “associate lecturers”
An honorary professor is not a title usually given to retired professors from the same institution. Rather, it is a title given to honour academics from other institutions for exceptional achievements. It’s along the lines of giving a public figure an honorary doctorate, but for people whose achievements make a doctorate seen like a step down.
Amp, your thoughtful and persuasive commentary at 158 and 159 has prompted me to reconsider UCL’s actions. While I do judge Hunt as overly hasty (perhaps defensively so) in proffering an almost immediate resignation (whether nudged to or not), UCL made a number of critical errors that could well have been avoided. I don’t think Hunt was owed any special handling (reporting what he said and what he admitted to having said and subsequently denouncing the character and substance of his remarks do not constitute hostility or rough handling, in my estimation), and I certainly don’t agree with the apologia that suggests his age or gender justifies and explains his ignorance, the official response was tentative where it should have been forceful and extreme (burdened by too much protesting) where it could have been considered and well-researched. The mostly substance-less, corporate-y handwaving about diversity lacked conviction and purpose, and probably fuels the popular, paranoid notion that behind the scenes UCL is either divided over the issue of sexism in STEM or a reluctant and inexpert convert. Allowing Hunt his prejudices while disproving them would have been a better strategy, but more difficult, too; perhaps there was no one willing to do the leg work (although some UCL associates and faculty have offered their individual and annotated analyses). That may speak to the culture of the university, in which case Hunt becomes less of an anomaly and more a working example of how and why it is so difficult for so many academics to acknowledge and address mostly invisible, institutional sexism, particularly when it is expressed in passing and airy little jokes that treat sexism as unsolvable, natural, and mostly harmless.
UCL acting wishy-washy and with less transparency about the machinations and processes behind Hunt’s resignation than strictly desirable has understandably ruffled the feathers of exactly those sorts of people, who for a variety of reasons (willful and unconscious) have difficulty accepting anti-sexist criticism as anything other than a personal attack by thought-suppressing, mercurial “ideologues” whose precise intentions are unknown but presumed to be malicious (feminists wanting to find offense everywhere, always looking for scapegoats, &c &c). Intentionally or otherwise, UCL has fueled that fire and there is no indication they’re willing to have a frank and useful discussion about what Hunt said and why it’s harmful. To mix my metaphors, they’d rather sweep the whole thing under the rug. That doesn’t bode well for female scientists or for people like Hunt, who could be persuaded to examine their prejudices for the better. To be sure, Hunt is not a victim of his own ignorance — there’s no shortage of useful data that demonstrate how small, banal acts of sexism affect the choices and self-perception of women navigating male-dominated professions and Hunt is no fool — but acting in good faith to educate and correct the willfully ignorant signifies a real commitment to diversity (rather than fashionable but empty promises). Warming up a chilly climate, and so forth.
I hate the idea that likens male (or white) supremacy to a disease, but “rehabilitating” Hunt, encouraging him to confront the biases he perceives to be merely “honest” observations, would have done them and Hunt good. Instead, they’ve made no one wholly content or reassured as to what will officially happen when somebody else digs this kind of hole, how to prevent those kinds of holes from forming in future. As you say, gathering the facts rather than obscuring them is what’s required but what didn’t happen.
I mostly agree, except if that initial speech advocates violence or is so dehumanizing and metaphorically but viscerally violent to be beyond the pale. Hunt did neither, of course, and didn’t escalate towards either when back-tracking. Firing someone for voicing ignorant but common bigotry is as equally useless and unconstructive as painting one’s critics as a lynch mob or gaggle of harridans. Words aren’t weapons in these instances.
Oh, and to be fair, while Hunt did eventually directly implicate UCL in his remarks (in response to their first official response, thereby necessitating UCL’s intervention in an effort to preserve their reputation), the program for the conference doesn’t mention his association with UCL. That doesn’t mean no one would never sounded out UCL for a reaction, but it could have given UCL enough room to condemn Hunt’s words without further condemning him, or to request that he avoid such politically contentious topics* in the future, as you suggested.
Thank you, and Daran, for transcribing that interview.
*very unfair that considering women intellectual equals and worthy collaborators is contentious, that their inferiority is a valid and credible opinion that deserves consideration
Thanks for that translation. What does it mean if someone in the US is simply described as a professor, without any qualifying adjective? Christina Hoff Sommers, for example. What kind of professor is she?
You’re welcome.
It doesn’t appear to have been part of an interview, as far as I can see, in that there’s no indication that he was responding to a series of questions, or even to a single question. Rather it appears to be a statement.
Also, if you listen to the audios, there are a lot of, er, “ums”, repetitions, repetitions and… hesitations, as well as sentences which restructured halfway through the sentence. So it was an off-the-cuff statement, not carefully thought out.
Also, neither Ampersand’s transcript nor mine are verbatim transcripts. Both of us have been kind enough to Hunt to remove the “ums” and “ers”, etc., and complete the sentence reconstructions, rendering his broken utterances into coherent gramatical English.
That doesn’t mean that they are not transcripts. They are. They accurately capture, not only the sense of what he said, but also the words he used to convey that sense.
Daran – Americans use “professors” generally to refer to anyone who teaches at the university level except for postgraduate students who are teaching as part of their studies. Usually there’s also the implication that that person is a researcher as well, but that’s not required.
Essentially, when Christina Hoff Sommers identifies as a “former professor”, that means she used to hold a teaching position at a university (in her case, Clark University). That may have been a junior one, or a senior one, that’s not possible to determine from the title (and I personally have no idea one way or another).
Ampersand:
From everything I’ve read, I interpreted the statement as “when you criticize [people/women you’re in a romantic relationship with], they cry”. Reading the quote, I think he was referring specifically to the women who “fall in love” with him, and not women generally:
This seems to be consistent with his follow up comments about how “emotional entanglements made life very difficult”.
Mookie:
I disagree. I can’t think of anything more toxic to the idea of academic freedom than the idea that senior academics (honorary or otherwise) need to toe the party line on political matters. I get that people might come to the conclusion that Sir Tim Hunt is not the go to guy for giving toasts or speeches at events for women or feminism. However, his conduct isn’t necessarily related to the criteria of honorary fellowship:
He was awarded a fellowship based on his distinction in science, the same distinction that got him the Nobel Prize. I don’t see how any comment, regardless of how politically objectionable, can undo the contribution he made to science and invalidate the reason for awarding the honorary fellowship. Calling for someone to be stripped of an honorary title because they made a joke you didn’t like seems to me to nothing more than trying to bully people into agreeing with you.
Ampersand:
I don’t think you can frame people who were actively pursuing an online campaign against Hunt by trying to get institutions to “take action” against Tim Hunt, including retweeting implicit calls for his Royal Society Fellowship to be revoked, as having “just reported Hunt’s words”.
When others take these actions against people who say disagreeable things, it gets labelled as “harassment” or a “hate campaign”. Is there a reason the same words shouldn’t be used here?
Desipis:
Those tweets don’t even come close to saying what you mean they said. Your first claim, especially, is egregious, since the tweet in question in no way called for any punishment of Hunt, and suggested a way forward that would have moved the issue away from Hunt and onto something else entirely.
One of us is so overcome by bias that he can’t even comprehend what he’s reading correctly. I’m sure it’s you, and probably you’re sure it’s me. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I really hate that you use terms like “harassment” as if they’re playing cards.
It’s mean, and shallow, and suggests that you’re more interested in point-scoring than substance.It’s a shallow argument which contains attempted point-scoring but no substance.[Edited to make the final sentence not a personal attack. Apologies to Desipis.]
Mookie, I don’t really have any response to your most recent comment, because I agreed with so much of it! But I wanted you to know I read it and thought it was great. And I appreciate the way you’ve pushed this thread and provided so many useful links.
Speaking of which, here are some links about the Hunt affair in my open tabs, which I’d like to close, hence posting them here. I don’t endorse everything said in every link, but I found them all interesting.
What Next after Tim Hunt? (#just1action4WIS) | Athene Donald’s Blog Some good discussion in the commments, too.
BishopBlog: How the media spun the Tim Hunt story
Emily Willingham: The trouble with calling critiques of Tim Hunt a witch hunt. Or a lynch mob, for that matter.
» “Just” Joking? Sexist Talk in Science
Rebecca Front on Newsquiz (a funny British radio show) discusses the controversy. That’s an audio link. She says people should check out #distractinglysexy, but the tag has lost focus over time (as is the fate of all internet conversations), so you’d need to scroll a bit to find the stuff she was talking about.
Luckily for me and all objective bystanders, there are means to judge the truthfulness of that statement. I am more than comfortable stating that that is where you and Mońko differ. There is no recording of Hunt to be parsed or compared to for accuracy and detail and fairness of interpretation (punctuation and exclamations are notoriously difficult to render, as your leaving those off amply demonstrate), and both Mońko and EC agree that his report is not a transcript, not definitive, and not above criticism. These are facts. There is nothing in evidence to support Mońko’s as being more truthful but that Hunt apologists have latched onto it and tried to lend it prestige, believing it (incorrectly) to exonerate Hunt from the terrible fate of having to eat his own words that he not not only said by everyone’s account including his own, but repeated multiple times.
Thank you, Amp! I look forward to reading those links. I’m a fan of Rebecca Front’s, so I’m really curious about her take on the matter.
Incorrect.
First Both The EC (via it’s spokesperson) and Mońko have both said that the report is not a verbatim transcript. This leave open the possibility that the report is a transcript, just not a verbatim one.
Second, the EC’s position that it is not a verbatim transcript is itself not above criticism. While it would be lovely to believe that the EC and similar organisations adopt such positions purely upon the basis of the facts, uncontaminated by political considerations, that is not true in general, and in fact, appears to be false in this case. If the Times article is to be believed then the remarks by “Commission sources” and “a Brussels source” indicate that the matter is highly poltically charged within the Commission. Certainly the claim that “Staff have been ordered not to discuss” the matter would explain the otherwise puzzling lack of attributable commentry by staff members including Mońko, so I am inclined to believe “Commission sources” on this point.
Third, the entirety of Mońko’s published remarks on this matter are contained in these two tweets by Charles Seife:
His full response. Notice he didn’t answer either of the questions actually asked. That doesn’t look to me like someone freely expressing their own views on the matter. That looks to me like someone reitterating his employer’s position, and making no further comment whatsoever. I do not see any reason to believe that Mońko agrees with his employer. He was acting as his employer’s spokesperson. Nothing more.
On the other hand we do have an authoritative statment as to the status of the words at issue: “This is the transcript of Sir Tim Hunt’s speech, or rather a toast, as precise as I can recall it”. This statement is not contradicted by the claim that it is not a verbatim transcript, and I see no reason to discredit it.
Oh but there is. There are multiple independent witnesses testifying to the fact that after making his (undisputed) “sexist” remarks, he went on to make further remarks implying that those earlier remarks were intended ironically, i.e., not to be taken seriously and going on to “seriously” praise female scientists.
In contrast there are only two witnesses as far as I can see denying that he made these additional remarks: St Louis and Seife. Blum and Oransky have said that they don’t remember, and in any case, they’re not “independent” of St louis.
It is far more plausible that Hunt did make these additional remarks and these four just don’t remember him doing so, than it is that multiple independent witnesses including the EC reporter all came up with mutually consistent confabulations of something which didn’t happen.
Actually it is Hunt’s detractors who are grasping at straws when they concoct implausible scenarios as to how the multiple mutually-consistent accounts of him making additional remarks could somehow have all been informed by each other. As for exonerating him, well you got my motivation wrong. I’m not trying to exonerate him from eating his own words. He’s already eaten them, and rightly so, since they caused great upset and offense, which is something that nobody disputes.
All I am trying to “exonerate” him from is the charge that the “monstrously chauvinistic” things he said were intended by him to be taken seriously or are his sincerely held views.
How about “culture war”?
Ampersand:
Did you mean to write that? Or did you intend something like “Those tweets don’t even come close to saying what you said they said” or “Those tweets don’t even come close to meaning what you said they meant”?
Ampersand (quoting Hunt’s recorded and edited telephone message to the BBC)
One thing that comes across, just from listening to this, and from talks he’s given, is that he’s not a great public speaker. He’s interesting enough when he’s giving a prepared talk on a subject he’s knowledgeable about. He’s probably not at his best when asked to come up with something on the hoof about something that isn’t a speciality.
The next bit seems a bit disconnected from the preceding. I suspect an edit at this point:
I don’t agree that he was defending the substance of “when you criticize [women] they cry”. He was advancing the quite different (and unremarkable, to anyone who isn’t a pychopath) proposition that when someone is crying, it’s hard to continue to doing the thing that is causing them to do so.
I don’t think he’s defending the substance. I think he is explaining where the idea came from. Having made the spontanious and extremely poorly-judged decision to pretend to be a chauvinistic monster, he found himself trying to think of sexist things to say. Perhaps he recalled an incident where a female colleague started to cry when he criticised her ideas. This (if I’m correct) is a neutral fact about something he experienced. That the chauvinistic monster he was role-playing extrapolated this to the generality that “women cry” does not mean that Hunt does.
I don’t think it is “extremely reasonable” to infer anything at all from a remark that may have been decontexualised by the imediately preceding (and possibly imedately following) edit. You might reasonable speculate about his underlying beliefs, reasons., etc., as I have just done, but as long as other interpretations are possible, no inference can be justified.
He doesn’t say that it was “completely” reported. At this point he probably doesn’t recall everything he said. He does however recognise the remarks attributed to him by St Louis as things he did in fact say in the sense that he uttered those words or words to that effect.
Again, his recollection is likely to have been influenced by St Louis’ article.
It is, in fact, disputed whether the audience generally took it deadly seriously. Clearly some did, but other witnesses say they took it as a joke themselves, and that they heard other people laughing.
I think it is very reasonable for people, having read St Louis’ account and also heard Hunt’s confirmation that the reporting was “accurate” to mentally close the case at that point.
Since then, a lot more information has come to light, which ought to have caused rational people to mentally re-open the case, reevaluate the evidence and revise their judgement accordingly.
People aren’t rational of course – a statement which is no more or less true of feminists than anyone else. Instead what happened is that people looked for ways to interpret the new data to accord with their original judgement.
I agree that it’s possible. It’s also possible that other people have adjusted their recollections in various self-serving and group-serving ways.
Yes, I meant something like that. Good catch, thanks.
(No matter how many times I proofread, these things still
out slipslip out.)Ampersand@133 “Although I guess there’s some wiggle room there, the most obvious interpretation of this is that St Louis, Blum and Oransky all independently took contemporaneous notes, which matched up…. On the other hand, the claim that the quotes they attribute to Hunt are a misrepresentation, are based mostly on the so-called “transcript” made by Monko…”
Let me know if you still believe that at the end of this comment.
What, Oransky’s backing her up?
Oh well at least Blum can back up the story with “identical” quotes.
Note, Prof Blum does not bring a notepad to a preplanned interview, but does bother to have a photo taken, thus documenting her lack of basic journalistic skills. Okay but at least Louis can keep her own story straight – wait what…
Well, maybe no blatant fabrications.
According to this, she was an associate professor.
Or at the end of this one. Here are cached copies of three more paywalled Times articles:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j98JvRcDFlMJ:http://failover-www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4479101.html
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iZHs3UTgZi8J:http://failover-www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4481497.html
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9vYUNy-NPxEJ:http://failover-www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4491896.html
Independent witness after independent witness after independent witness are giving accounts that are consistent with the UC observer’s best-of-his-recollection transcript, and his observations about how Hunt’s toast was received, and which contradict the narrative presented by St Louis, Blum, and Oransky. Even St Louis is now backtracking from her original claim that he did not say “now seriously”.
This is probably a bit of a side note, but where is all the criticism and naming-and-shaming of this politician who apparently said something sexist? Why she given the shield of anonymity?
The whole phenomenon of limited information posted in social media leading to a rush to judgement and mob action has to stop, regardless of whether it’s something politically-incorrect that someone said or a cop shooting someone.
Amp @ 151:
I quite agree with this. Far too many institutions are making snap decisions in order to preserve at least a veneer of political correctness and placate certain cultural factions. And, once having made a decision, institutions are loath to reverse them; I suspect in an attempt to hide the fact that it WAS a “knee-jerk reaction.” Bureaucrats hate nothing more than admitting that they made a mistake and will do or say just about anything to avoid it.
If it was purely a case of reporting on something a famous scientist – or any other public figure – said in public, I’d agree. But I cannot agree with accusing the people reporting on them as engaging in culture war without considering the fact that the feminist writers who reported on what he said without adding important context were themselves engaging in culture war.
I think police, in particular, have to subject to public criticism. This is especially true when someone has been shot by police. And public criticism, by definition, will include a range of public voices, including some people rushing to judgement. That’s inevitable.
When we see a case like Eric Garner, who died a year ago today, our first reaction should not be to try and quell the outrage, or to complain that some of the angry people on twitter have not been nuanced. Either the police who accidentally killed Eric Garner were extreme outliers acting far outside of police department norms, in which case we should be outraged at them; or they were not outliers, in which case our outrage should be at the system.
Basically, I agree with you that online outrage is sometimes a problem. But people use the problem of online outrage as an excuse for ignoring much more crucial problems – like police violence, and (to return to Tim Hunt) like sexism against women in the sciences.
* * *
Your comment was a little ambiguous, by the way, but it could easily be read as you singling out leftists (those who’d criticize politically incorrect statements, those who criticize police shootings) as people who should shut up, while giving similar behavior from right-wingers a pass. I assume that’s not how you intended it.