Brian Cox comments on Tim Hunt

I don’t think I’ve said anything yet about Tim Hunt’s comments on women in science. Here are the comments, for reference.

"It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. 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 criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?"

Brian Cox has weighed in on the controversy:

No, wait, that wasn’t it. Sorry. He was talking about something else entirely there. Probably homeopathy or moon hoaxers or something. Here’s what he actually said:

"On the other side of course, there is the wider problem of trial by social media. People do make ill-advised comments from time to time so is it appropriate to hound someone out of their position at a university or indeed is it appropriate for the university to react in the way UCL in this case did and ask someone to resign or threaten to sack them?"

Very interesting. So I guess the first quote, although it seemed to be a general statement, actually had a hidden clause giving an exemption for this case so that these comments should be left immune to criticism.

The question then is, is the exemption because the guy making the statement has a shiny prize for a thing he did back when he was a working scientist? Or is because the statements were about women?