Our distinguished scientists at New Scientist report on a controversy over what appears to be sexual harassment by peer-reviewed research. It seems that several Chinese and one English researcher submitted a paper on the sexual habits of the short-nosed fruit bat (I guess the short nose is a necessity). They’ve come to a remarkable breakthrough discovery: bats blow.
I know that I’m going to be accused at a stalker blog of being anti-science for failing to genuflect to the majesty of this bit of science that’s obviously going to lead to practical cold fusion, but it appears that’s not the only criticism.
It seems that at the University College Cork in Ireland, a certain psychologist at the university’s school of medicine is in deep guano for showing this paper to “a female colleague”.
A week later he got a letter informing him that he was being accused of sexual harassment. Evans says the whole case is “utterly bizarre”. The complainant’s side of the argument is that she was “hurt and disgusted”, and asked Evans to leave a copy of the paper with her as way of cutting short the meeting.
Imagine that. You show a serious research paper to a professional colleague, and bam! These prudes start investigating you. It must be the pope behind this. All hung up over sexuality and all that. This would never happen at an enlightened research institute like LGF; they’d put it in the footlocker right next to the leathers and pickelhaube.
The university’s president, Michael Murphy, nevertheless imposed a censure, which Evans says has prevented him getting tenure. An online petition calling on the university authorities to back down has been set up and has been signed by high-profile academics including philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and Steven Pinker of Harvard University.
Dennett calls the punishment “an outrageous violation of academic freedom” and Pinker says the “absurd and shameful” judgment “runs contrary to the principle of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech, to say nothing of common sense”.
I haven’t seen their manual on common sense, so I can’t comment, but the rest of it’s probably true. But if I’m not mistaken, sexual harassment is a trump card in academia, and so none of the rest of that stuff (including common sense) matters.
Tags: Bats, Sexual Harassment
