Social Justice Warrior Gets Taste of Her Own Medicine
Live by the Tweet, Die by the Tweet!
Mark Twain once wrote that “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
In the age of the internet, that saying should be updated to “three times around the world”, as is evidenced by the story behind the resignation of a British scientist.
I recently reported that Dr. Tim Hunt, a Nobel-prizing winning physiologist, a British knight, and a leading advocate for science education that is usually promoted by women’s rights activists, made a lame joke about single-sex labs. His punishment in the wake of a vicious social justice campaign was his forced resignation from the University College London.
New revelations about the speech and the context of the joke have surfaced. An account of a European Commission Official who took detailed minutes of the event adds key information absent from the original report:
According to the new account, Sir Tim started with: “It’s strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists,” which makes clear he mocking sexism, rather than indulging in it. St. Louis reported this as Hunt simply admitting: “he has a reputation as a male chauvinist.”
Immediately after the now infamous joke, according to the new evidence, he proceeded to make several very pro gender equality remarks, including: “Now seriously… Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me,” which was similarly disregarded in St. Louis’s twitter report.
Hunt has already protested that he added, “now seriously” to indicate the joke was over.
This new data comports with science education advocacy mission that had been part of Hunt’s work until this incident.
Why, then, was this critical bit left on the cutting room floor from the original report? To answer that question, real investigative journalists at the Daily Mail began doing work reporters used to do — checking the background on the author of the original complaint about Hunt’s speech.
… [W]ho exactly is Connie St Louis? And why, exactly, should we trust her word over that of a Nobel laureate?
A good place to start is the website of London’s City University, where St Louis has, for more than a decade, been employed to run a postgraduate course in science journalism.
Here, on a page outlining her CV, she is described as follows:
‘Connie St Louis . . . is an award-winning freelance broadcaster, journalist, writer and scientist.
‘She presents and produces a range of programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service . . . She writes for numerous outlets, including The Independent, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, BBC On Air magazine and BBC Online.’
All very prestigious. Comforting, no doubt, for potential students considering whether to devote a year of their lives (and money) to completing an MA course under her stewardship. Except, that is for one small detail: almost all of these supposed ‘facts’ appear to be untrue.
For one thing, Connie St Louis does not ‘present and produce’ a range of programmes for Radio 4.
Her most recent work for the station, a documentary about pharmaceuticals called The Magic Bullet, was broadcast in October 2007.
For another, it’s demonstrably false to say she ‘writes’ for The Independent, Daily Mail and The Sunday Times.
The investigative piece found even more fascinating material on St. Louis (emphasis, mine):
…Her work for The Guardian appears to consist of two online articles: one published in 2013; the other, about the Sir Tim Hunt affair, went live (online) this week.
Curiously, that 1,000-word piece, in which St Louis recalled the scandal, was heavily edited after publication. Around 30 changes, some of them significant, were made to it. In an apparent contradiction of usual Guardian policy, the version now running online contains no disclaimer detailing this fact.
Elsewhere on the City University web page, readers are led to believe that St Louis has either become, or is soon to become, a published author.
‘She is a recipient of the prestigious Joseph Rowntree Journalist Fellowship to write a book based on her acclaimed two-part Radio 4 documentary series, Raising Ham,’ it reads.
But that is not the full story. In 2005, St Louis did, indeed, receive the liberal organisation’s ‘fellowship’. She was given £50,000, which was supposed to support her while she wrote the book in question.
However, no book was ever published. Or, indeed, written. An entire decade later, the project remains a work in progress.
Additionally, comments from conference participants have been to surface that support Hunt’s original assertions:
Comment by Russian science journalist @demna25 backing #TimHunt http://t.co/bcCLqpdNFb @LouiseMensch @guyadams pic.twitter.com/5UkwBpn7Mb
— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) June 27, 2015
However, St. Louis has her social justice defenders:
@mbeisen @connie_stlouis let me think. Do I believe former chair of British Science Writers/lecturer in journalism.. or unnamed source…hmm — Natasha Loder (@natashaloder) June 25, 2015
…so I felt compelled to respond.
Frankly, based on the evidence, I’m gonna go with the unnamed source! https://t.co/HTJNtw48p1
— Leslie Eastman (@Mutnodjmet) June 28, 2015
I will also note that given how brutally Hunt was treated in social media, and the consequences to his career, it is little wonder the sources wishes to remain unnamed.
There are demands that Hunt’s critics apologize. However, the talented scientists is still out of a job.
I would suggest an American institution add him to its faculty—and promote the fact that it is creating a “safe zone” to protect men (both students and faculty) from unsubstantiated claims made by deluded feminist activists. Given the plunging enrollment for colleges around the country, it may find itself in the happy position of having more applicants than it can handle.
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Comments
It is one thing for scientist to falsify, distort or create data out of whole cloth and then publish. Such actions bring deserved discredit to the scientist and the journal which published his or her ‘work’. It is quite another thing to have a pseudo-journalist publish slanderous material about an individual.
Let us ask, is ‘Connie St. Louis’ her true name? Has she published any piece beyond the op-eds she is credited? How did she get an invitation to attend a ‘Women in Science’ event when she, herself, is unqualified to be a scientist?
Sir Tim is deserving of not only an apology from the University, he deserves a public apology by this ‘Connie St. Louis’ person.
I had a professor at the University of Texas who once said a tenured professor could copulate with a coed
in front of the podium and still keep his job.
I guess tenure ain’t what it used to be.
I guess a knighthood and a Nobel prize aren’t enough to stand up to a strong black (woman?) with an affirmative action job.
Real justice would see this St Louis thug receive the same loss of a career that was visited upon her victim. Unfortunately, for the SJW on the left, her lies are unimportant and the fact that she callously victimized an innocent person irrelevant.
They see that their cause has been advanced. They see that people will bow to them in fear if they protest. This is exactly what they want and St Louis is a hero to them regardless of the truth of her accusations.
This is about the use of power to make or break people as they choose. St Louis has won even if her victory is one born of lies and deceit. In fact, the very fact that her victory is one based on lies makes it all the more attractive to the left. It demonstrates that they need not be limited to truth when attacking their ideological enemies. They will remember that. They will continue to do this until they suffer worse penalties than they are inflicting.
I guess people will never learn while they still draw breath. The guillotine is happy to accept the necks of the people who bring progress about so that others, who come later, and who are purer and more radical, may thrive. Always has it been so, and always shall it be.
That St. Louis apparently does almost no work at all is probably a good thing.
“I would suggest an American institution add him to its faculty—and promote the fact that it is creating a “safe zone” to protect men (both students and faculty) from unsubstantiated claims made by deluded feminist activists.” Are you kidding? Your suggestion is the exact opposite of today’s campuses and the prejudiced professors that dwell there. Only leftists make these kind of accusations and smugly smile as their victims world collapses. The Duke la cross team and more recently the Rolling Stone false UVA rape case are good examples.
I would suggest an American institution add him to its faculty
Huh? American academia provides no shelter from progressive racism or sexism. It may not have quite that Twilight Zone sense of bizarre unreality which Europe to add to almost anything, but it’s still a cesspool of official bigotry.
She can not be punished by losing her job because she does not have one worthy of the name. 50,000 pounds and 10 years to write a book?
The Guardian, anti-science, anti-Semitic and anti-truth.
A great place for a sexist, racist academic fraud to write.
It is simply necessary that sane and rational people accept the truth, proven over and over and over again by reality: all leftists are lying, corrupt, and evil, or dupes of those who are.
There is no true leftist with good will, only some doe-eyed “useful idiots” (to use Lenin’s term for them).
Once the decent people acknowledge this, the nonsense will begin to recede. But not one moment before we do acknowledge it.
How long before the re-education camps are up and running across the free world. Or should I say, the once free world.
This glutton looks like she’d want a taste of anything.
From what I’ve read about Dr. Hunt, he is a progressive and has done well in a cultural environment of leftist drivel.
Had this happened to someone else, he would have apparently had no trouble denouncing them. Even now, his supporters regale us with tales of his progressive/pro-feminist actions and statements.
He assumed his joke would be understood by everyone because he thought everyone knew about his progressive/pro-feminist bona fides.
The Left are now eating their own. Let them be.
I don’t think we should be condemning the man. He may be “progressive” in some ways, but I haven’t heard of him doing any dirty deeds like St. Louis. Besides, he’s a genuine top-rank scientist. St. Louis is most likely motivated by hatred and envy; he does remarkable scientific work, and she’s not even capable of doing her supposed job of reporting on it.
I think you are all forgetting that Ms St Louis did nothing wrong only to report a sexist remark made by Sir Tim Hunt which he admitted too. All that followed was and continues to be down to the media. Everyone stretches their CV’s. Have you forgot The Apprentice? By all means make your comments, but given that none of you were present you don’t know what was said an not said. Ms St Louis did not advocate for the removal of Sir Tim Hunt from his post. Sir Tim Hunt did that all on his own…Tah dah!!!!!
Aside from having tenure, the man has a knighthood, a doctorate, and a FREAKIN’ NOBEL PRIZE, a real Nobel in a real science. He should be unassailable, unimpeachable BULLETPROOF. He made observations about the conditions of men and women working together in the workplace, in the lab, that are UNDENIABLY TRUE. When men and women work together, workplace romances and attachments often happen, and often go wrong. I’m sorry if that’s too heteronormative for you to handle. Women cry more easily and more often than men — it’s a SCIENTIFIC FACT. That he said it in a humorous way offended the humorless. Dr. Hunt is an ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE, and for science education, INCLUDING FOR WOMEN. I wouldn’t care if he called for ending education for females and the return of the slave trade HE HAS THE RIGHT TO HIS OPINIONS, AND HE HAS EARNED THE PRIVILEGE OF OUR RESPECT. The (woman?) who busted him is an affirmative action hire, a token, a twofer, a placeholder, a LIAR, and a smudge bespattering the image of a great university, and has done little more than draw a paycheck for doing next to nothing for the past ten years.
How is it that people get dethroned by a social media storm? Why does anybody pay serious attention to such things, instead of treating such storms as the fakes that they are?
I truly do not understand it.
It’s for Social Media Justice. It may be unfair, libelous, and malicious, but it’s for a good cause, and it’s fun. In fact, the shakier the grounds for demanding action on a social justice issue, the more that shows high moral commitment to the cause. Anybody can call for justice when the facts and law are on his side. Hell, liberals and moderates do that, even Republicans, but it takes true commitment to scream for justice when the facts are not clear, and it takes a real SJW hero to stay the course in the face of an avalanche of facts to the contrary.