Tim Hunt the victim of self-righteous feeding frenzy, says Richard Dawkins

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. It wasn't just a joke, though

After it was first reported, he went on the BBC to say he was sorry, but then said he meant most of it:

"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.

"I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult.
...
On his remarks about women crying, he said: "It's terribly important that you can criticise people's ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth.

"Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33077107

He's 72, and seems to have retired from active research in 2010. His positions now are honorary or advisory, and I think it's reasonable for organisations to decide his advice is not really worth having any more. Some have just said "he's wrong, his remarks are nothing to do with us"; others have asked him to resign. I think that's a reasonable reaction.

I don't think anyone should be saying he's "likely on on the autism scale". He's a successful scientist who has been in demand for speeches and positions on scientific councils and similar. Invoking autism seems like trying to excuse his views as "not his fault". Here's an hour-long BBC programme about him: