Source: BBC Radio 4
URL: N/A
Date: 03/07/2015
Event: UCL "just knee-jerked to the tune of Twitter"
Credit: BBC Radio 4, The Now Show
People:
Jon Holmes: Another man, who could be well be one of the greatest living scientists on the planet, stands up on another stage, said something nowhere near as bad as the guff that Kanye West continually bawls out of his hippy-hopping mouth, goes nowhere near a cherry-picker and everyone wants him sacked, right? Perhaps Professor Sir Tim Hunt - for it is whom of which I speak - just isn't bad-ass enough.
[Hip-hop/rap style music intro.]
Jon Holmes [sings]: Yo, let me tell you about the trouble with girls, they cry in the lab when you criticise their work. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and I'm just being honest, it's what scientists do, so spill up some Ace on these sick J's...
[Audience laughter and applause.]
Jon Holmes: And yeah, how the audience complained. Professor Sir Tim Hunt - or Professor Sir Tim Witch-Hunt, to give him his full title - made an admittedly ill thought-out joke. How their mouths fell open - "aghast" I think that was the word that was used - in stony silence. Except we're now learning that perhaps that, well, not so much. We now have conflicting reports that say that no-one in that room disapproved, there was even applause and that the only reason mouths fell open was to laugh.
Someone disapproved, though. She was a delegate, she was in the room, she was called Connie St. Louis, she immediately took to Twitter to denounce Professor Hunt and rally a Guardian-reading army, opening a Pandora's Box of po-faced protesters. Did Professor Sir Tim Hunt say the bad things? Well, here's the thing, right. I don't care. 'Cause whatever the truth of it all is, I wish to register a complaint. I want to complain, I want to protest, I want to criticise and I want to carp.
Because that's all the rage, isn't it. Ooh, I heard a thing I didn't like, so I shall complain. Or maybe I didn't hear a thing I didn't like but I did hear about the thing I definitely wouldn't have liked on Twitter, but I reckon that if I had been there to hear it, I'd have been so livid I should go back to Twitter or some such and continue to be angry about the thing that I didn't see or hear in context there, and I shall continue to complain about whatever it is until someone is forced to resign or is sacked, hashtag #ohjustwindyourneckinandgetoverityouwhingeingbagofblether. [Audience laughter and applause.]
So Tim Hunt had to go because he may or may not have said something in or out of context. And University College London, the no-balls institution that’s forgotten that in science the first thing you need is evidence, didn’t really investigate it and just knee-jerked to the tune of Twitter and fired him via a phone call to his wife. She then said in an interview -
Woman's voice: Tim sat on the sofa and started crying, then I started crying.
Jon Holmes: Yeah, typical woman, starting crying. Sir Tim might be right. But support for him of course began to grow and is still growing. Radio 4’s Jonathan Dimbleby resigned his own post at UCL this week, to protest against their treatment of Sir Tim. Brian Cox has defended him, nine Nobel Prize winners, Dame Valerie Beral, Director of Oxford Cancer Unit has spoken for him, and even that well-known feminist Germaine Greer is on his side. Sorry, not Germaine Greer, Boris Johnson, sorry, I always get them mixed up. [Audience laughter.] Oh, and Katie Hopkins – oh actually, this is probably doing more harm than good now, isn’t it. [Audience laughter.]
But the question remains as to why a big institution like UCL should be rattled in the first place by a handful of complainers on social media, right, demanding the offender’s job on a platter. What kind of world are we living in when fewer than 140 characters, using fewer than 140 characters can hold this kind of power, and why the hell is anybody listening to them? If you'll indulge me, with apologies to Michael Rosen, I'd like to tell you a story about a big, bad creature.
[Comical-sounding music intro.]
Woman's voice: We're going on a witch hunt. We're going to catch a big one.
Chorus: We're not scared!
Jon Holmes: We're going on a witch hunt. We're going to catch a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.
Chorus: We're not scared!
Jon Holmes: But he should be...
Woman's voice: Uh-oh! He said something a bit stupid that might actually not be that bad in context.
Chorus: We're not sure!
Jon Holmes: But we can't get round it, we certainly won't get over it, so let's go through it in detail, using a hashtag.
Chorus: Hashtag #burnhim! Hashtag #burnhim!
Jon Holmes: We've been on a witch hunt. We got everyone sacked.
Chorus: We weren't scared!
Woman's voice: But we're the Twitter Inquisition.
Chorus: So you should be!
Jon Holmes: The End. Thank you.
[Audience applause.]