Geoff Marcy made headlines in the New York Times last week, having resigned his professorship in the Department of Astronomy at UC Berkeley since his penchant for sexually harassing women finally caught up with him. Some headlines are saying this may be a watershed case, since until last week, he was the star of one of the top four astronomy departments in the U.S., as well as principal investigator of a $100 million project to find life beyond Earth. These headlines say that attitudes in science about sexual harassment may be changing, since Nobel laureate Tim Hunt recently made some stupid remarks about women that weren't laughed off, either.
Nevertheless, want to know what pisses me off THE MOST about Geoff Marcy?
It's not that I used to admire him, since he was indeed among the founders of the field of finding planets of other stars, also called exoplanets. One of the problems with science is that being a perfectly awful human being often doesn't negate one's science. Einstein treated his first wife horribly and abandoned his sons. After one was institutionalized with schizophrenia in 1933, Einstein never saw him again. Nevertheless, special and general relativity have passed every test, and the camera in that mobile phone in your pocket works because light does have both wave and particle properties, the idea for which Einstein got his Nobel prize.
It's not that other people I used to admire couldn't have helped but to have known that Geoff was a terror to women for so long, and looked the other way. The story about Geoff putting his hand up a woman's dress while at a disciplinary hearing makes me say, WTF? It's not that other people I used to admire clearly shielded him from the consequences of his actions. It's not even what Geoff did to at least four women, at the very least severely straining their careers. It's not even the harm he did to science, including whatever science these women might have achieved otherwise, which of course we'll never know now. It's not even that I didn't get to personally staple his dick to the floor. (Up until last week, I promise I didn't know that he did this, but then that tells you something about how out-of-it I am in Fresno.)
What pisses me off THE MOST about this is knowing that the chances are quite good that he'll now get a job in Europe among his former competitors, and all this may be conveniently forgotten until they get nominated together for a Nobel prize.
Indeed. It's possible things have changed more than we think, and he won't land on his feet. I mean, given how hard it is for people to get good academic jobs these days, how easy it would be for a hiring committee to say "you know, there's a whole stack of good people who won't cause a massive problem for us right away, over here on the table," maybe he will just have to fade away.
ReplyDeleteWhat if Einstein behaved exactly like that? Can you think of anybody else who did such great things that his shortcomings should have been ignored and perhaps were? ? I actually see this as a good thing. At some point, exceptional merit trumps many moral considerations, and much is forgiven when one is such a valuable person.
ReplyDeleteI can see how, when special treatment is due to reasons such as inherited wealth or noble status, that could be unfair. However, a scientist's special privileges, if any, are due to his exceptional merit. He earned them. It is unfortunate that some of them may involve being a jerk, but nothing is perfect and life is not fair.
Um, Monica? Einstein DID behave exactly like that. He was a player: that's what much of the trouble with his first wife was about. Erwin Schroedinger was much worse.
DeleteScientists do not exist on some higher moral plane, and so get indulgences as a reward for good ideas. We want more good ideas and fewer or no bad side effects, both from the science itself, and from the scientists themselves.
I don't think Science is in a class by itself in terms of what benefits society. If we stipulate that "exceptional merit trumps many moral considerations" then we get into the business of also forgiving really good singers, really funny comedians, etc. for being absolute sleazebags. It feeds into a culture of moral relativism that no society could tolerate.
DeleteA modest proposal: we simply designate a certain fraction of the population to be the victims of these sleazebags, so that the rest of society can enjoy the exceptional merit without the sleaze. Compartmentalization is great!
Of course, my comment applied to other types of talent as well. I thought of artists, for example. But one of the reasons this moral relativism is not that bad is simply that it is hard to remain at the top for a long time. At some point, talented people may start to repeat themselves while other people come up with something better, or at least newer and more popular. They may not lose their talents, but they are no longer so exceptional and irreplaceable. At that point, they may still deserve work, but they no longer deserve to get away with being "absolute sleazebags", if they ever did in the first place.
DeleteI met my share of Don Drapers both in industry and academe. They produced results and were allowed to get away with their shenanigans. It also helped that they were well-connected. Without that, I'm sure that many of them would have been turfed out into the street.
DeleteIsn't this at least partly what Institutes (e.g. the Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein spent a good chunk of his career) are for: somewhere to put the rare academic who is genuinely so brilliant that you're willing to pay hir just to do research/think, but who may also be so bad at human interaction that you really don't want to foist hir on students or colleagues? This is, admittedly, probably a remedy more easily applied to theoretical physicists (and artists, if anyone is willing to pay the freight) than researchers in the disciplines where "PI" is a common role/title. I suspect the answer there might be a really good administrative assistant (of a gender/age/personality unattractive to the researcher, and with a thick enough skin, and/or a high enough salary -- essentially, combat/hazard pay -- to put up with whatever comes hir way) who handles any necessary human interaction -- essentially, a human shield for the rest of the team. Another option, in these days of virtual connections, would be to ban anyone with these tendencies from physical attendance in the lab/conference venue after the first (or maybe, at most, second) offense, but allow unlimited (recorded) virtual interaction.
DeleteBut there are probably a few dozen people, worldwide, who are really brilliant enough to justify such efforts to preserve our ability to avail ourselves of the fruits of their genius, while insulating others from the harmful effects of their personality (maybe a few more if you add the virtual option, which is cheaper). Otherwise, spending the money on supporting a few not-quite-as-brilliant but decent human beings is probably going to work out better in the long run. As you point out, Frod, there are very real costs to the discipline, as well as to individual human beings, from this sort of behavior.
The problem with the IAS is how it gave Kurt Goedel's wife cause to call it, "the old folk's home." It was founded as "a university without students," where great minds could be undisturbed to think great thoughts—with the result that few of them did.
DeleteSure, they had a stupendous faculty, including Einstein, Pauli, and Dirac, but by then, their best was behind them. Einstein said the best perk of working at the IAS was getting to walk to work every day with Kurt Goedel. So what did they talk about, you might wonder? Sadly, not much of consequence: by then they'd become just couple more old guys who'd let the world pass them by. Without the students, a university loses vitality. This is rather an odd sentiment to express on a forum that grew out of RYS, don’t you think? ;-)
One exception was a Hungarian mathematician who was hired at age 28 and spent the rest of his career at IAS, John von Neumann. He invented this thing you might have heard of called a digital electronic computer. After he died, the IAS faculty voted that from then on, IAS would have no labs and no connections with industry. This was called “the triumph of the snobs.”
If you’re wondering how this is related to sexual harassment, that’s easy. IAS’s institutional symbol has a naked woman in it, “Truth.”
If he does manage to ingratiate himself with the Europeans, we may yet hear of him because in Europe, the mains voltage is higher than in the States, so the same electric staple guns are theoretically 4x stronger.
ReplyDeleteIt says something about how real all the commenters here are to me that I've been waiting for you to weigh in on this, Frod. If this asshole ends up in Europe, I hope it's a country with a robust tradition of student protest.
ReplyDeleteHiram could lead us in an excellent discussion about what is real, and how real is it. Believe it or not, I do have a heavy-duty staple gun in my office, right next to me here now.
DeleteParticle physics has it's share of these types.
ReplyDeleteIt's come to something when you're relieved to hear that a particular famous figure who isn't going away only leches on willing ... uhm ... not victims exactly, so perhaps targets. At least the ones who are just flaming assholes to everyone around them discomfort those that hired them, too, instead of just the less powerful.