|
WHEN WITCH HUNTS ARE LED BY WITCHES
h/t InstapunditThough it was meant as a joke, it turned out to be a deadly serious affair. When Professor Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, recently addressed a major conference in Seoul about women in science, he said he had three problems with 'girls in laboratories', namely that: 'You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.' As a media storm erupted, Hunt insisted that his remarks were made in 'a totally jocular, ironic way'. But none of that matters to today's self-righteous crusaders against offensive opinions, for whom language is never a laughing matter. Professor Hunt was immediately surrounded online by an outraged Twitter mob demanding his head on a pike. These boycott-and-ban zealots are not content with exercising their right to criticise somebody who makes an offensive joke. Quivering with self-righteous indignation, they want to silence those who fail to conform to their group-think. In this case, their bullying worked. The scientific authorities immediately caved in. Not only was Hunt forced to resign from his post at University College London, but he was also dismissed from the science committee of the European Research Council. So biochemistry loses a brilliant pioneer, while we lose more ground to the forces of oppressive censorship. For the saga of Tim Hunt's downfall is just the latest example of how a culture of verbal prohibition is taking over society, led by an army of self-appointed militants who see themselves as the guardians of correct thinking. The technical terms for what we see in western institutions of higher learning is gynocracy. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-06-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=421196 |