Chauvinist lab rats like Hunt a ‘science turn-off’

Hunt ‘played right into’ the stereotype of scientists as geeky men

LONDON: He has, if nothing else, empirically proved that if you want to “joke” about “the trouble with girls” in science, the best place to do it is probably not at a lunch sponsored by leading female scientists at a conference full of journalists.

Tim Hunt, the hitherto universally respected Nobel Prize winner and Fellow of the Royal Society, found himself the focus of global outrage this week after telling a lunch sponsored by “powerful, role-model female scientists” at the World Conference of Science Journalists: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.”

He was, he reportedly added, “in favour of single-sex labs”. For good measure, although possibly superfluously, Hunt also said he had a reputation as a male chauvinist.

According to Connie St Louis – a lecturer in science journalism at City University who was at the event and, of course, reported on it – when Hunt’s talk came to and end “there was this deathly silence. A lot of my colleagues couldn’t believe somebody would be prepared to stand up and be so crass, rude and openly sexist”.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Hunt would wish to apologise. “I’m really, really sorry I caused any offence,” he began, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he had intended his comments to be “lighthearted” and “ironic”.

“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he continued. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and people in the lab have fallen in love with me. It’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab, people are on a level playing field. I just meant to be honest, actually.”

Twitter was not forgiving. Hunt, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, was compared to the main character from Ian McEwan’s novel Solar, “a Nobel winner and a total moron”.

Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, president of the European Research Council (ERC), which funded Hunt’s fateful trip to the conference in South Korea, insisted Hunt was no sexist. “In his main speech he was very supportive towards women in science. On the ERC Scientific Council he has only ever been a supporter of gender balance.”

But the affair has led to increased attention on women’s under-representation in science, with research last November showing that only 16 percent of full-time professors in science, engineering and technology are female.

Helen Wollaston, director of WISE, the campaign to promote women in science, technology and engineering – whose own research puts women working in these sectors at 13 percent – said Hunt had “played right into” the stereotype of scientists as geeky men who were happy with Bunsen burners and computers but utterly flummoxed by women.

She told The Independent: “When you ask primary school children to draw a scientist, they come up with a man who looks like Einstein, with spiky hair. It’s a stereotype that’s seriously unhelpful… It puts girls off going into science because they don’t want to be thought of as geeks.”

But Wollaston added: “There’s always a silver lining. This has galvanised a campaign: people will want to join the ranks of those who want more diversity in science.” – The Independent