Oh. good catch, didn’t read that far. Still though, that’s already the fifth political correctness controversy he was in (though one might argue the underlying factor is PC-ness increasing, or something)
The previous ones weren’t as bad as the Africans one, and I dunno if you appreciate just how big a punishment that is: Watson was not some honorary appointee of Cold Spring Harbor, he practically made that place. (I say practically because the place was around before Watson but he brought it into the modern genetic era.) He was deeply respected in the area. (I went to a genetics summer camp there; one of my other friends was babysat by Watson when she was kid.) To push him out so blatantly… I’d compare it to Sumner but Sumner apparently already had weakened his powerbase considerably and so his ouster wasn’t that impressive.
I chose a bad example to illustrate my point. What I wanted to say is that it seems there are plenty of people who say and do absolutely atrocious things and nothing ever happens to them… and then some random well intentioned person wears a t-shirt or makes a joke in poor taste and is eviscerated. My intuition says that it might be a bad strategy for these very minor offenders to back down and submit immediately (which they do presumably because they themselves agree with the steelman of the criticism) rather than going on the offence concerning how they are being treated for a relatively minor indiscretion.
If I were Hunt and a reporter had published a bad joke as though it were a serious comment, I’d be denouncing the reporter for libel. Whereas Hunt just kept digging himself deeper into a hole, apologizing for the comment, and even attempting to defend the comment, rather than attacking the premise of it even being news.
Oh. good catch, didn’t read that far. Still though, that’s already the fifth political correctness controversy he was in (though one might argue the underlying factor is PC-ness increasing, or something)
The previous ones weren’t as bad as the Africans one, and I dunno if you appreciate just how big a punishment that is: Watson was not some honorary appointee of Cold Spring Harbor, he practically made that place. (I say practically because the place was around before Watson but he brought it into the modern genetic era.) He was deeply respected in the area. (I went to a genetics summer camp there; one of my other friends was babysat by Watson when she was kid.) To push him out so blatantly… I’d compare it to Sumner but Sumner apparently already had weakened his powerbase considerably and so his ouster wasn’t that impressive.
I chose a bad example to illustrate my point. What I wanted to say is that it seems there are plenty of people who say and do absolutely atrocious things and nothing ever happens to them… and then some random well intentioned person wears a t-shirt or makes a joke in poor taste and is eviscerated. My intuition says that it might be a bad strategy for these very minor offenders to back down and submit immediately (which they do presumably because they themselves agree with the steelman of the criticism) rather than going on the offence concerning how they are being treated for a relatively minor indiscretion.
If I were Hunt and a reporter had published a bad joke as though it were a serious comment, I’d be denouncing the reporter for libel. Whereas Hunt just kept digging himself deeper into a hole, apologizing for the comment, and even attempting to defend the comment, rather than attacking the premise of it even being news.