Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt sparked controversy and sharp criticism earlier this week when he decided to share his thoughts about the “trouble with girls” in science at a conference of science journalists. “Three things happen when they are in the lab,” he said, “you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”
In response to the offensive comments, female scientists have been sharing “distractingly sexy” photos of themselves on social media.
While Hunt claims his comments were meant to be a “light-hearted, ironic comment”, he has now resigned from his position at the prestigious University College London.
On Thursday the hashtag #DistractinglySexy began taking off, amassing more than 10,000 tweets in a few hours. The trend was started by the feminist online magazine Vagenda, which encouraged female scientists to share pictures of themselves at work.
We’ll leave it to our readers to determine just how distractingly sexy hard working female scientists really are.
