Sir Tim Hunt - women should stay out of labs because they distract men

[MurielWoods]

and they cry too easily and make men fall in love with them

I shit you not

I wonder if any of his male lab assistants have ever had a gay crush on him?
Or is he homophobic as well as a mysogynist?

Sexy labs. Where he has lots of 'trouble with girls'. Mmmm, a nobel prize winning scientist 'falls in love with girls' in his labs and then they cry when he criticizes them. I read that as an older man, in a position of power, flirts with his staff and upsets them. Wonder what will come out from the 'girls' point of view.

Monstrous Guess who his mate is at the Royal Society? None other than Sir Paul Nurse, the PRS. Joint in the Nobel.

Aha. Very telling.

I'm now imagining a truly terrible late 1970s music video for the song Sexy labs in which women wearing a lot of lip gloss and white lab coats with nothing but stockings and horrible stiletto heels gyrate around gurning, grubby-looking beardies in brown clothes and kipper ties.

Someone has hot-wired a psychic connection between my brain and Tim Hunt's, clearly. Can anything be done for me?

My father was a bearded scientist. But clean. And handsome, and not sexist, far from it. I wish he were still around to set the Hunts of this world straight. He would be aghast.

My DF was too but not bearded and still alive. I'm the middle of three generations. It was very sexist in my day. Probably much, much worse in my father's day. Think of Rosalind Franklin :( and DD takes no notice of them

One of my favourite "feminist" scientists

twitter.com/AstroKatie

She got a lot of abuse over shirtgate because she dared to have an opinon.

"If you defend a scientist's sexism/racism/homophobia w "but they did Great Science Thing!" please note they could've done it without bigotry"

Sir Paul Nurse is totally compromised in this scenario due to his ties with Sir Tim Hunt.
The Royal Society is also compromised, due to the change in funding allocation that happened about forty year ago. The Government asked the Royal Society to allocate the funding rather than the Research Councils.
The Royal Society also has a Council and within that is ....
The only way to undo the damage done, is to wheel out a media savvy Brian Cox perhaps?
Or Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell?
Or even Baroness Greenfield (she's been on the receiving end).

But probably not Prof Mary Collins

There's been loads of research on institutional sexism in science - from getting into universities, the attitudes of lecturers, getting funding for grants, articles in journals and getting on in a career.

It seems to be difficult - especially in some fields. Time off in science is bad for a career where publishing is part of it and keeping up with advances.

I think Tim Hunts should stay out of labs because their SPECTACULAR nose hair would be distracting to everyone!

Talkin she'll keep quiet.

In 25 years of working in labs I've never fallen in love with a colleague or had one fall in love with me. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong?

I said something similar on the same subject in feminism, but Pierre Curie managed to not be distracted by the woman he did actually fall in love with to the point of being awarded a Nobel prize beside her.

But then Mari Curie went on and won another one without him, so maybe she cried and he got distracted because it couldn't possibly be because she was good at science.

Well us female scientists are just that hot, I'm afraid.

Maybe these men should be getting on with their work instead of oogling women. Lab services would certainly run more efficiently.

One (female) member of the RSc has described this as a 'Watson moment' and has offered him diversity training.

I did the falling in love in a lab thing - yielding a long marriage and a lovely DD. Mind you, we were students so perhaps that doesn't count?

A load of relationships came out of the lab I worked in including mine and dh's. I can't say we did much groundbreaking science, must have been all that sex going on!

Errol, I met my DH in the lab as well (well, he worked in the lab down the corridor, so perhaps not as distracting?). It's, y'know, just meeting our future partner at work. Perhaps we should have segregated lawyers' offices, or GP surgeries or any other fucking workplace since a large proportion of the human race meet and fall in love with their partner through the workplace (including my brother and his male partner!).

Man's an arse. And this also means that my sideline in talking to girls (i.e. under 18 females!) about how great it is to work in science just got that much harder.

I fell in love in a lab too, happy memories of electron microscope room . DP in question went onto work in Mary Collins team, maybe lab shenanigans is infectious

And Accountants should probably work in segregated offices too, because they keep falling in love with colleagues,
let alone medics
or - shock horror - teachers

So basically he just wants to work with clones of himself.
Sounds like that would be nicer for the rest of us though

The problem with science is that many labs are run by dicks like TH. in some ways, it isn't their fault. Being a good scientist doesn't make a person a good manager.

In 10 years spent working in labs, I saw 8 female students sexually harassed by their bosses. 8!

Someone needs to tell Tim that it's not the "girls" that are the problem. It's the letchy old men who think that, just because they're going through a midlife crisis, it's ok to hit on their young students

Honestly, academia is so riven with sexism (overt and subconscious), it's incredibly tiresome if you're a woman.

I told my 16 yo about this, she said the obvious: 'if men are distracted that's their problem'.

I had a good laugh at 'sexy labs'.

Statement from University College London this evening:

"UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has today resigned from his position as Honorary Professor with the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences, following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.

UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality".