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Boris Johnson Backs Sexism Row Scientist

Boris Johnson Backs Sexism Row Scientist

Boris Johnson has urged the reinstatement of a top scientist who was forced to step down after sparking a furore with his controversial comments about women in the laboratory.

The London Mayor and Tory MP has argued Sir Tim Hunt did not deserve to be "pilloried" for his remarks about the "trouble with girls" during a speech to a conference in South Korea last week.

The Nobel Prize winner later apologised, insisting his comments were intended to be funny.

But in the face of a furious backlash he resigned from both the Royal Society and University College London.

Sir Tim has argued he had been "hung out to dry".

And Mr Johnson has now waded into the row and said the remarks were made during a "light-hearted, off-the-cuff speech".

Speaking at event to mark the start of London Technology Week, Mr Johnson said: "I think people should take it in the spirit in which it was meant.

"And I think one of the troubles in the Twittersphere and internet is that it is possible to create a great roar.

"And all the ferocious stinging bees of the Twittersphere descend on one poor victim and sting him half to death.

"And that is what has happened to poor Tim Hunt."

Writing earlier in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said: "He did not deserve to be pilloried, and should be reinstated forthwith to his academic positions."

Sir Tim reportedly described himself as a "chauvinist pig" at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul and argued in favour of single-sex laboratories.

He said: "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."

Mr Johnson said it is a scientific fact that women cry more readily than men, citing the research of Professor Ad Vingerhoets of Tilburg University, and argued it should not be an offence to point out a "gender difference".

He compared the reaction to Sir Tim's comments to what he dubbed "mumbo jumbo" claims by a Malaysian minister that the actions of tourists, including Briton Eleanor Hawkins , who stripped on a mountain considered to be sacred had caused an earthquake.

Mr Johnson wrote: "I am afraid that we in 21st-century Britain are in no position to snigger at the tribes and their fit of irrational indignation.

"We have our own mystery gods these days."

TV historian David Starkey also gave his backing to Sir Tim.

He told Sky News: "The trouble is universities are now being taken over by very definite forms of political correctness."

Sir Tim's comments were "silly" but also "modest, deprecating", he argued.

Dr Starkey added: "This man is a brilliant scientist, he's a Nobel Prize winner.

"Simply to defenestrate him, to throw him through the window, because he's made the odd incautious remark seems to me to display the weirdest sense of values.

"If a university isn't about intellectual quality, isn't about intellectual distinction, it really is time we shut up shop with the lot of them.

"Universities are not about furthering minorities, they are not about furthering special interests, they should purely be about the mind and the quality of the mind."