Tim Hunt, where’s the science in your prejudice against women? | Anne Perkins

The Nobel prizewinning scientist accuses women of being over-emotional in the male world of rationalist truth-seeking. Perhaps it's not his female colleagues who are the problem

The mask has not so much slipped as crashed to the floor. Stand up and be thanked, Sir Tim Hunt, fellow of the Royal Society (at the time of writing, at least) and the winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for physiology for his work on regulators of the cell cycle. Here at last is someone who has come out with it. Women at work are a nuisance.

Hunt chose his moment of public revelation at, of all places, a women's convention on science and journalism in South Korea. Perhaps he thought they'd be flattered when he told them that the trouble with women in labs was that they fall in love and cry when they're criticised.

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