The Tim Hunt sleight of hand
The internet has been all atwitter about the blatantly
sexist remarks made by Nobel laureate Tim Hunt earlier this week, at a women in
scientist event in Korea. These remarks
have been roundly ridiculed, as is appropriate for such stupidity from such an
influential scientist. A few days later,
after a half-assed apology, Professor Hunt resigned.
This is unfortunate. His
resignation allows his university, not to mention the rest of academia, to “shoot
the messenger” and use him as a scapegoat to ignore the structural problems
that allow academia to shelter and perpetuate sexist behaviour in the first
place. It is like treating cholera with doxycycline while ignoring the sewage.
Ideally, his remarks, which were basically an admission of
sexual harassment and/or bullying, should have triggered the standard
investigative processes at his universities.
If, in fact, he has been hiring in a gender-biased manner, or taking
sexual advantage of starry-eyed underlings, or making his employees cry, then
he should be dealt with using the appropriate channels. By resigning in haste, it means that we have
no way of gauging the efficacy of the university grievance policies, and it
gives his victims no means of redress or compensation.
I have mentioned many times the depreofessionalization ofscience, and the attendant social problems that result. However, the flip side of scientific research
getting outsourced from the corporate world to academia is that it requires
academia to get more professional. This
is especially true in those areas where commercial research is being done. However, there has been a resistance from
academia to adopt professional attitudes and work practices along with this
work. And this is one of the problems
that allows sexist and racist hiring practices and work environments to persist
in the ivory tower while private and public sector workplaces are trying to
reduce them.
In all types of workplaces, people do fall in love. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t,
and People hopefully learn to work out how to balance their personal and
professional lives before their 72nd birthday. But whether one believes the appropriate
waiting time between leaving supervision and calling should be measured on the second
hand or by the orbit of Mars, the admission of a senior researcher of
committing damaging and unprofessional behaviour should not prompt knee-jerk
resignation. This just deflects
attention from the institutional structures that either address or cover up
these sorts of problems. The issue is
not Professor Hunt’s twinfamy; it is the inability of academic institutions to
protect their junior personnel.
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