Sir Richard Timothy Hunt still has his Nobel Prize for cancer research, but earlier this month he resigned from his position as honorary professor of life sciences at the University College of London and from an awards committee of the Royal Society.
Why? At a conference in South Korea, he had said something that in today’s world is considered offensive:
Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.
There was a media outcry at these remarks, and, according to Wikipedia he resigned under pressure. Ian Tuttle of NRO commented:
It’s not enough to conduct serious scientific work; you must hold the correct views. The former — your theses, your monographs, your Nobel Prize — are no compensation for a dearth of the latter. And it seems an obvious corollary that, eventually, the latter will make up for a dearth of the former.
Interestingly, even while defending Hunt, Tuttle felt compelled to call Hunt’s phrases “prima facie objectionable” and to explain that Hunt “improperly generalized from what was probably an encounter he had in his own laboratory experience.”
Hunt said what he thought and there’s probably some truth to it. But the fear of being politically incorrect is contagious; it even infects conservatives.