Possibly not but that is the standard excuse people are making. “Oh, it was just a joke and social justice warriors forced this kindly scientist out of his job over a joke!!!”
Don’t care?
So, if he was going to solve old age and make folks immortal, would you be cool with him being a Nazi and helping exterminate Jews? I’ll go full Godwin here. You’re excusing bad behavior (while saying there is none the rest of the time) by saying his contributions to society mean he can be a bad actor because his bad actions are insignificant against his contributions. That, my friend, is a pretty damn slippery slope to “the ends justify (or excuse) the means.”
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More information show that he originally said he was “being honest about the problems” that women in the lab are just too emotional https://storify.com/deborahblum/tim-hunt-and-his-jokes-about-women-scientists
He said these things at a lunch hosted by female Korean scientists, where apparently the gender imbalance is something like only 17% of Korean scientists are women.
Step one is realizing that he said something that was completely inappropriate and that he needs to rethink both his public comments and his personal attitude toward gender equality. Suggesting that women either be kept out of science or segregated from the menfolk is a great big Not Okay.
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Frankly, yes. In comparison with that holy grail, pretty much everything else pales into insignificance.
Hell, I like von Braun merely for getting men to the Moon. Sure, it was a bunch of cisgender white American males who walked up there, but it does not make it any less of an achievement. And you celebrate his work every time you switch on your GPS.
Yes. Because they are. I’d prefer spending a quality dinner with a “bad” Nobel Prize laureate and talk about biochemistry than having the same dinner with a SJW talking about oppression. But that’s just me. Feel free to heap your scorn, I’m too drunk and too tired today to care anymore.
We live in a world built upon this. Look at the history.
At certain numbers, a bunch of anecdotes become a representative (or semi-representative) sample with statistical significance.
Yes and no. There is the lack of pain inherent in seeing others lucking out, the reminders of all the fails little and big. Same reason why I eschew fiction with people crap and prefer documentaries. Triggers, they call it, I think.
I have control over my behavior. I do not have nearly such control over my feelings.
Make it a relationship targets. That doesn’t help too. Less complex, same outcome, just less stress about failing because that’s granted; I couldn’t see the nonverbal signs of interests even if I could get any. Then naturally somebody else wins the game and I just get to replace the surnames in the mail accounts. Happy life, isn’t it. Oh well.
I can give up and avoid the complications. I cannot be happy for others lucking out while I can’t. Sorry for not being ideal, so sorry.
And yes, it is something I wanted, to belong and settle down. Little wonder, it is apparently a hardcoded behavioral pattern that goes to monkeys and beyond. I am at least honest enough to admit it.
A quarter century (or more, depending on the cutoff when to count from) of loneliness with just enough success to know what you’re missing will do quite some wear on your mind.
Anyway, sleep for me now. It’s 7 am and the process spawning loop in the data acquisition system will need my attention tomorrow.
I’m afraid your moral compass is effectively broken. I really don’t have anything to say to you here. I actually think less of you for your justification of…well, any horrid behavior if you think the person doing it is somehow useful. That is, literally, how people wind up justifying various genocidal behaviors and other atrocities. If you think that this is true, I doubt we have a reason to even try to communicate.
Good luck with life.
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More likely a little knocked off kilter through being inebriated and maudlin. When impaired, people say or write things that are more extreme than they mean. Which is what started this whole mess …
Please don’t start another pile-on here.
I still maintain that any of those shamed scientists of late has more worth for the mankind than all their detractors summed up.
If you compare the value of research applicable to cancer with the value of a couple insensitive words, and you don’t get the former way way outclassing the latter, something is wrong in turn with you.
Even when sober, I’d prefer to dine with Operation Paperclip scientists/technicians than with the Sensitive Tumblr Warriors of Social Justice. Neither will get me laid and the former group is more likely to have more interesting things to talk about.
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He got the scorn and vitriol you can expect these days in amounts according to the size af his platform. If he had said that stuff in a lab to some women scientists… it would in all likelihood been ignored even if harmful, since that is what usually happens when stupid misogynists speak.
But he said it at a podium to a conference of women in science. I’d say it worked out well. What do you suppose it is, XX number of times a person perpetuates that sort of poor, abusive thinking and gets no sanction at all while the people they are denigrating just have to tolerate it or face sanction themselves, versus X number of times someone in such a position is held to account, absolutely without fearing much in the way of payback?
It worked out just fine. Just a reminder, no one tore open his head and scooped out his brain, he can still science if he wants.
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It’s really amazing seeing people going on rants about how women don’t have any worth. Which is what you’re saying here. Nobody is calling for his research to be stopped or any of that. They’re making fun of him being a sexist asshole after he insulted them.
That’s what he got “fired” from. Representing an organization, after he went to a lunch and insulted the hosts, saying that the hosts were completely unsuitable for their job because they were women.
In short, you want women to be attacked and insulted and told they’re worthless, and don’t want anyone to ever say otherwise.
What value to YOU have to the world? I’m guessing not much.
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That’s a quite creative interpretation of what he said. How exactly, word by word, did you arrive to this result?
No. He’s just kicked out of the institutions doing that research. Similar result.
Another creative interpretation. Fairly common in the discourse today.
Time will tell. You?
I at least don’t call for disposing of old, experienced scientists over some “insensitive” unimportant remarks.
Which is kind of difficult without the infrastructure that involves the labs and the associated equipment. And the library access to the paywalled articles. I am working on some designs of cheaper instrumentation to somewhat alleviate this but it is too little.
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He outright said that women were bad scientists because they were too emotional. That’s what he said. To a lunch hosted by a bunch of women scientists. From a country that has really bad gender disparity in the sciences.
If you don’t think that’s an insult, well, there’s no hope for you.
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He said that the emotionality is causing problems. Which it does. He named a problem that exists. The “they are bad scientists” is something you shoehorned into the interpretation on your own.
Sadly, there are large groups of people who insist on being insulted, and are skilled with creative interpretations.
So we get tempests-in-teapots internet outrages and careers get ruined and scientists are ousted and their potential is underutilized. Everybody loses, to let a few feel righteous.
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Please provide evidence that emotionality among women scientists is a greater problem than among male scientists.
Please provide evidence that women scientists cry when criticized more often than male scientists.
Please provide evidence that women scientists are harder to collaborate with, as compared to male scientists. Especially given the history of male scientists outright stealing the work of women and getting credit for it.
Proof. Prove it. You want to make strong statements like that? You better fucking back it up.
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But the potentials of women who are forced out of sciences, or discourages from the sciences, they don’t matter. All the women talking about how he insulted them, well, their voices don’t matter. All the women who took this as an opportunity to talk about how they were discouraged from being scientists, the sexism they faced, all the bullshit they had to put up with that’s still a real problem - they don’t matter. When you talk about potential, you only care about the potential of men. We get it.
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Consequence of free speech. He could always apologize for reals, or find someone willing to exclude women from their labs, or a lab willing to employ him that would allow him access sans prestige and honours.
He isn’t that all hard done by, and one nobel laureate in exchange for progress on further unlocking the potential of over half the humans on earth is hardly a big deal especially when they’re only slightly diminished & not actually done away with.
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