Meredith Wadman in Science [following up on her explosive report from six weeks ago]:
11 June 2018: Leading Salk scientist resigns [his position at the Salk Institute] after allegations of harassment (11 June 2018). [DrugMonkey comments: "Plea bargains are unsatisfying to the victims of their type of crime."]
2 May 2018: Accused cancer scientist resigns as [editor-in-chief] of prestigious journal [PNAS]
From this explosive, deeply reported story in
In reports stretching from 1976 to 2016, women allege, variously, that he grabbed their breasts, pinched their buttocks, forcibly kissed them, propositioned them, and repeatedly commented on their physical attributes in professional settings. The allegations come from a Salk lab technician, a postdoctoral researcher, other Salk staffers and faculty, and women outside of the institute, including a potential faculty recruit.
Five women in their 50s and 60s in secure scientific positions agreed to be named in this story. Three younger women requested anonymity, fearing repercussions to their careers. They cited Verma’s power at Salk and the reach of his influence, including his connections to Nobel laureates, National Institutes of Health (NIH) peer-review committees, and journal editorial boards.
Last Saturday, Wadman also reported that Verma was asked to go on administrative leave by the Salk Institute. Here's an extract from Salk's announcement:
We have also learned that Science is preparing a story about Dr. Verma and related allegations. Earlier this week, the reporter presented the Institute with information about her story that included claims the Institute was not previously aware of. We take these allegations very seriously and have expanded the scope of the investigation.
These days, Current Science features only guest editorials by invited contributors, and it's great to see my IISc colleagues being featured in this very exalted space. Here's a quick sample:
Prof. Rohini Godbole: Women in STEMM: involve the institutions.
E. Arunan: Borders in science and nations are artificial. Should we have borders within India?.
B. Ananthanarayan: Joy of discovery as a reason for pursuing a career in science.
Becky Ferreirain Motherboard: How a Victorian Astronomer Fought the Gender Pay Gap, and Won:
... [One] of the most interesting fights [Maria] Mitchell [the first professional female astronomer in American history] took up during her life was over an issue that remains incredibly relevant: equal pay for equal work. Given that the gender wage gap still is a pervasive problem in STEM fields, it’s worth revisiting the utterly badass way in which Mitchell approached some 145 years ago.
In her Slate article -- The Real Real Genius -- she says, "Thirty years ago, I helped inspire the lead female character in the classic nerd movie. I finally understand why some critics disliked its portrayal of women."
Anant Bhan has a link-filled post over at British Medical Journal Blogs:
Given the high number of women entering medicine—a status report in 2012 pegged the number of female medical students in India at around 200 000, compared with 175 000 male students—and subsequently also joining as faculty in medical colleges, one would expect a significant number of them to occupy top leadership positions in medical education. This is where there seems to be a gap—much fewer women occupy positions of director or principal in medical colleges in India than men.
Let’s take the example of those institutes of national importance in India which offer medical education courses. There are 11 of them: the seven All India Institutes of Medical Science (AIIMS; in Delhi, Rishikesh, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Raipur, Patna, Bhubaneshwar), the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER, Chandigarh), the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER, Puducherry), the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS, Bengaluru), and the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST, Thiruvananthapuram). Of these 11 institutions, currently only one has a female director—Asha Kishore became the first female director of SCTIMST in mid-July 2015 after the institute had been without a director for two years.
Scroll.in has a great article entitled Remembering Dr Janaki Ammal, pioneering botanist, cytogeneticist and passionate Gandhian by Geetha Doctor on the life and works of Janaki Ammal, a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences right from its first year.
Maki Naro in Popular Science: The trouble with Nobel Prizes -- They're not magic medals of blamelessness.
So don't write to me saying I don't care about science because a poor guy tarnished his own gold star by making a bad, sexist joke and got called out on it. Instead, ask yourself how much you care about science that you've allowed the past to supersede the future. Take a long look at the choices that led you to put science before people. Instead of blindly defending an old man with a medal, try to listen and reflect upon yourself and the society that led you to defend him in the first place. Then GTFO.
Alice Bell at Open Democracy: After Tim Hunt: Another Science is Possible. "After the widespread reaction to Tim Hunt’s comments on women in science, it’s time to unpick the various hierarchies that stifle scientific debates and practice."
Janet Stemwedel at the Forbes Science Blog: What if Tim Hunt had done it differently:
So, let’s rewind the universe to a point in time before Tim Hunt’s trajectory intersected with the controversy. You might think the crucial moment at which to consider “what if” is when Hunt was asked to make some remarks to the luncheon. But let’s go back more than a year earlier, to spring of 2014, when Tim Hunt was interviewed for Lab Times. Here’s part of that published exchange:
In your opinion, why are women still under-represented in senior positions in academia and funding bodies?
Hunt: I’m not sure there is really a problem, actually. People just look at the statistics. I dare, myself, think there is any discrimination, either for or against men or women. I think people are really good at selecting good scientists but I must admit the inequalities in the outcomes, especially at the higher end, are quite staggering. And I have no idea what the reasons are. One should start asking why women being under-represented in senior positions is such a big problem. Is this actually a bad thing? It is not immediately obvious for me… is this bad for women? Or bad for science? Or bad for society? I don’t know, it clearly upsets people a lot.
What if, after the interview, Tim Hunt had done some thinking about the underrepresentation of women in science, especially in senior positions? What if he had sought out some of the people clearly upset by the inequalities in outcomes and listened to them in order better to understand that upset? What if he had looked at the research on the various factors that still present barriers to entry and inclusion for women (among others) in science?
If he had done that, then by June of 2015, asked to speak at the luncheon, he might have had a somewhat better understanding of the women scientists in his audience.
"... [Yes], I made those remarks – which were inexcusable – but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way. There was some polite applause and that was it, I thought. I thought everything was OK. No one accused me of being a sexist pig.”
-- Sir Tim Hunt
That assertion -- "I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way" -- is strongly disputed by Deborah Blum, who was there and who quized him about what he meant. [Update: She elaborates on those tweets in an essay at The Daily Beast.]
Michael Eisen offers a different perspective on Hunt's self destruction, and it involves a previous event in Kashmir: Sympathy for the Devil?
Geoffrey Pullum in CHE: 36 Words.
#DistractinglySexy -- storified!
* * *
Update (2 July 2015): Connie St Louis in The Guardian: Stop defending Tim Hunt.
A high-caliber scientist has some unscientific notions about women scientists. Who knew?
A couple of links on the Nobel laureate's thoughts "his trouble with girls".
Marion Walker in Scroll.in: Nobel laureates must set an example to their field, not bring shame."Sir Tim Hunt's resignation as honorary professor at University College London must not be the end of the debate over gender in science."
#Distractinglysexy Twitter campaign mocks Tim Hunt's sexist comments
NYTimes has yet another story on how some college or the other is doing such a great job of attracting, and retaining, women in its computer science program. If it is the University of Washington this time, it was Harvey Mudd last year, and Carnegie Mellon back in 2007. These are the ones I have read; there may be others that I didn't even know about. [Update: And, oh, there's also this from 2011, though it is not quite about women in computer science].
It would have been interesting if the later stories showed some awareness of the earlier ones -- for example, if Carnegie Mellon did some great things get a lot more women into its computer science program back in 2007, how well is it doing now? Has it improved enrollment figures for women even further? Has it hit a wall? Has it let things slide?
But, but ... I'm just quibbling here. The most recent intervention by NYTimes in the Women-in-Computer-Science debate is quite good in its coverage of the kinds of experiments at different places (UWashington, Michigan State, Harvey Mudd, Harvard, ...), as well as of the kinds of curriculum-related debates within Computer Science.
