Lecturer who accused Noble Prize-winning scientist of sexism has her course cut

A journalism lecturer has had her course, “Science Journalism” cut due to it being really unpopular, Heat Street has reported.

Connie St. Louis, formerly MA Director for Science Journalism at London’s City University, accused Sir Tim Hunt, a Noble Prize-winning biochemist, of serious sexist remarks at a conference in South Korea last year.

Connie St. Louis © City University

The remarks, which cost Hunt his honorary Professorship at UCL’s Faculty of Life Sciences, were later found to have been selected from a longer speech in which Hunt praised women’s participation in scientific research. Within this context, the remarks were in fact a joke.

In a statement released to Heat Street, City University said that St. Louis’ course “has been suspended for the 2016/17 academic year following a decline in student enrolments”.

This means that St. Louis who is the only one in the department to have her course cut, will now have much-shortened working hours at City. On the University’s 2016/17 timetable, which can be accessed here, St. Louis has no contact hours in the Autumn Term and only nine three-hour seminars for the Spring Term.

Connie St. Louis’ timetable for this academic year

St. Louis initiated a world-wide debate on the existence of misogyny within academia when she claimed that the Hunt had made serious sexist remarks when he made a toast at a South Korean women’s conference.

St. Louis reported that 72 year-old Hunt had 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. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?”.

Sir Tim Hunt admitted that he and his wife had cried following the allegations

Although news outlets and social media sites, including The Tab reported these word as an example of academic sexism, Hunt had stressed that they were intended as an ironic joke.

When the full two-minute toast emerged (reprinted below), it became evident that St. Louis had been highly selective in what she had reported to the press.

Hunt had actually said,

 “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? Now, seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.”

Richard Dawkins said that Hunt had been the victim of a “lynch-mob”

Aside from misreporting what Hunt had said, an investigative article by the Daily Mail later reported that St. Louis had falsified her CV when she claimed to have written for the Daily Mail, Independent and The Sunday Times.

Digital archives from all three newspapers show no known by-lined articles from her, nor did the Mail accounts department have any record of paying her for a contribution.