{"id":4836,"date":"2015-12-15T20:43:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T19:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=4836"},"modified":"2016-03-18T21:15:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T20:15:06","slug":"whats-changed-anything-just1action4wis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2015\/12\/15\/whats-changed-anything-just1action4wis\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Changed? Anything? (#Just1action4WIS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the year, amongst other things, of the #distractinglysexy hashtag, as discussed recently on BBC Radio4 here<\/a>. This hashtag was itself part of the fallout of #Huntgate, the undeserved fall from grace of a Nobel prize winner on the back of an ill-judged joke in Seoul around which a whole mythology seems to have grown up.<\/p>\n

As someone who knew Tim Hunt reasonably well through committee work (but hardly on terms of close friendship, both facts I have always disclosed) and so knew perfectly well the nature of his sense of humour as well as his active support of women, right from when his remarks were first brought to my attention I was convinced this was a joke that had gone horribly wrong. My reaction was that the stories that were abounding were unlikely to be an accurate representation of what had actually happened. Yet as a supporter of the cause of women in science it is clear that I was \u2018expected\u2019 to want to shoot the man. That, on the contrary \u2013 and like many women who knew and admired Tim \u2013 I wanted to express my support meant I became the target of those who thought I had \u2018let down the sisterhood\u2019 and that my views would apparently ever more be suspect. Indeed I became the target of some vitriol that certainly caused me to lose sleep (mild by comparison with many; there has been some truly horrendous abuse tossed around, none of which I condone).<\/p>\n

What I did not foresee was the way the story would run, and run, and run: 6+ months on it is still rumbling on. It has long since ceased to be about Tim himself. People continue to try to get at the \u2018truth\u2019 and indeed new facts are still emerging, although also new red herrings. As lawyers know only too well, asking witnesses six months on what happened and how they felt is not likely to provide particularly reliable information. Yet there are those who attempt to base their case<\/a> on such witness statements (which collectively seem to be about as contradictory as one might expect, sometimes internally self-contradictory too)*.<\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s apparent silence in the face of questions at a Sexism in Science session in Seoul, which fuelled much of the anger in some quarters, has been shown to be down to a case of misidentification. Tim has demonstrably been shown to be elsewhere \u2013 actually lending support at the talks of two women scientists. The person being questioned didn\u2019t answer because they had nothing to do with the case. Even some of those most visible on the \u2018anti\u2019 side of the fence have accepted<\/a> this misidentification. Yet that doesn\u2019t seem to have caused the anger to abate as one would have hoped given this fresh concrete evidence and not all those who initiated that particular part of the story seem to have had the grace publicly to correct or retract what they said and wrote. Other people were made angry due to the initial misattribution of a quote about thanking \u2018the ladies who had made lunch\u2019, a remark actually made by a Korean female politician. Again, the clarification of who made this inane remark does not seem to have caused everyone to reconsider whether their anger at Tim was justified.<\/p>\n

That in July I used Louise Mensch\u2019s reports to support the \u2018pro-Tim case\u2019 seems also to have caused people to become angry specifically with me. I was surprised by the remarks I received privately and publicly from people I respect, taking this line. As far as I\u2019m concerned when hard evidence is produced I regard it as evidence regardless of its source. It does not make me one of her \u2018minions\u2019, as some of her allies have been described, it does not mean I have \u2018collaborated\u2019 with her as others charged. Nor does it mean I have always approved of the tone of her writing and tweets; I haven\u2019t. It does mean that where I knew facts that were not already in the public domain (from the ERC\u2019s perspective in particular with regard to an earlier post of hers) I could see her investigations bore fruit.<\/p>\n

Her latest analysis<\/a> of when the outrage began building into the visible Twitterstorm that led to the media hounding of Tim does provide new, hard evidence demonstrating that the Twitter fury essentially occurred only after<\/u> the misidentification of Tim at the Sexism in Science affair and not in the immediate aftermath of his ill-fated toast. I think that fact suggests that the outrage was not simply sparked by what he said, as has usually been implied.\u00a0 (Indeed it seems that the journalists who have described their horror at his initial words did not themselves attempt to talk to him in the hours after his toast \u2013 privately to call him out \u2013 despite there being opportunities to do so.) My own attempt at an interpretation is that the understandable undercurrent of ill-feeling around the wider issues of sexism exploded into an ad hominem<\/em> attack on Tim as an obvious high profile target (with subsequently many others caught up in it) in the face of \u2018his\u2019 apparent refusal to answer questions at the Sexism in Science session in Korea.<\/p>\n

There is of course a huge problem about sexism in science, of which many women will have personal and painful experience. Everyday sexism abounds, in the lab as elsewhere; most certainly it gets hurled around on Twitter. But this big problem in day to day science is what we should be exerting our collective energies towards addressing and it does not seem to be.<\/p>\n

Surely it is time for people to accept that mistakes were made by many on a variety of fronts in this sorry story. Tim may have been idiotic in making his self-confessed ironic comments (as he himself would admit) but others have got hold of misinformation and refused to let it go or accept its inaccuracy. Many folk have sought to build a case to hang the man, acting as judge and jury, based on very little hard evidence.<\/p>\n

People seem determined to point fingers and to go on doing so \u2013 something I, for one, early on entreated<\/a> we stopped doing. It is as if some people enjoy throwing mud more than moving the world forward. If everyone is so concerned about sexism in science, could we not just concentrate on that challenge and do something useful instead of expending energy attacking others who ultimately share the same goals? I said in July<\/a> in the closing comment on my own post that I felt this sad saga resembled the story of the suffragettes versus the suffragists and nothing has made me change my mind.<\/p>\n

There was a brief surge of enthusiasm for my call in June<\/a> for #just1action4WIS (Just one action for Women in Science), but I do not see it has had any lasting impact. (Nor, as the recent BBC Radio4 broadcast spelled out, has #distractinglysexy succeeded in doing any better despite the huge number of tweets with that hashtag.) So let me remind you of my list of actions<\/a> that all of us can and should bear in mind as we go about our daily lives.<\/p>\n