Monday, October 12, 2015

On Colin Blakemore and ABSW











richard.jowsey said...

Well said, sir. My compliments. :D

Thomas said...

Thanks. :-)

Anonymous said...

I can't see a formal complaint making any difference. The real scandal here is that there is a cabal of ideologically-driven charlatans at the heart of science writing who are happy to lie to protect their own and further their agenda. I don't believe the timing of the NatGeo hit piece - published just in time for the SciWri15 conference - is an accident, for example.

Perhaps there is a student journalist (at, say, City Uni London or MIT) who is already planning to bag her first big scoop by exposing this shameful state of affairs. Certainly, she would have unrivaled access to the principal actors.

chris westwood said...

"No one who knows him has anything bad to say about him on this point"

Not quite true. The following know him very well:

Professor David Colquhoun
Professor Uta Frith
Professor Dorothy Bishop.

These three in particular chose to attack Hunt, for whatever reasons only they can tell.

This is an omission, but they are no loss to any argument over something like this.

Thomas said...

I wasn't aware that they knew him "very well", but I'll check into that.

It's true that Colquhoun, Frith and Bishop jumped on him after St. Louis' tweet came out. What was striking, though, was that they didn't add any more evidence to the case against Hunt. That is, the toast in Seoul and the Labtimes interview remain the only two symptoms of Hunt's alleged sexism.

If Hunt truly was a sexist, you'd expect at least some people who've had close contacts with him to come forward with stories about his behavior. It's in that sense that I mean no one seems to have anything "bad to say", though lots of people took the opportunity to call him names, yes.

chris westwood said...

Thomas, Colquohoun worked in the same department at UCL. He claimed that pouring a bucket of ice cold water over his wife was evidence of Hunt being a mosogynist. Also claimed to know a female scientist who was too scared to speak against Hunt. If she had a case against Hunt there has never been a better time to give testimony. But he still claims to have evidence.

Frith is in a similar group at UCL, claims to be "incandescent" at the mention of Hunt, but no evidence of a reduction in the UCL lighting bill.

Bishop, who is busy maintaining a research group at Oxford with as few male members as possible, would know Hunt well because of medical interests and participation at the Royal Society. So far no mention of the ladies in her team thanking the men for emptying the trash cans, but I'm on the case.

Andrew Gelman said...

Sir Tim, Sir Paul, Sir Colin . . . . it all makes me glad to be an American. We have lots of problems but at least we don't go around calling people Lord and Sir!

Louise Mensch said...

I complained twice.