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Politically Correct Zoology
flynny51 writes "Dr. Dylan Evans of the School of Medicine, University College, Cork, Ireland, has had a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counseling imposed upon him and as a result his application for tenure is likely to be denied. His offense — sharing an article from a peer-reviewed journal on fellatio in fruit bats."
For copies of the letters sent back and forth along with far more details:
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/report1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/report2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_report.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_reply1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_reply2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/letter_2_pres.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/ifut.pdf
best guess but going mostly from rumor and reading between the lines: the woman who lodged the complaint is quite likely the wife of one of the VP's in UCC.
It wasn't a student.
It was another member of staff.
Seriously, grow up. As the paper in question demonstrates, the animal kingdom clearly has at least as many kinks as us humans do. It's not "sinful." Far from it -- if you believe in a deity, it seems obvious that this deity heartily approves of sex in all kinds of variety.
Or, if you can't deal with that, fine, believe whatever you want -- but stop retarding scientific and social progress with your puritanical ideals.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
He wasn't even lecturing about it to students, if his protest letter is accurate. He was sharing it with a colleague, which I assume means another professor, a research scientist, or some other variety of non-student researcher, in the context of "an ongoing debate with the colleague in question about the relevance of evolutionary biology to human behaviour, and in particular about the dubiousness of many claims for human uniqueness". Seems rather relevant, and strange to object to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If nature facts don't agree with your moral beliefs... the worse for the facts.
Next Vatican will be sending missionaries to teach the bats about properly moral sexual practices.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Science is science; what little simple-minded cretin made this decision? Someone should dig up the name and contact details, so we can mock him/her properly.
Emotions! In your brain!
This is not everything that he has been accusing of.
" According to her statement, these include over-enthusiastic hugging and cheek-kissing, unwanted compliments about her physical appearance, lying to her about his qualifications, and spreading rumours about the special nature of his relationship with her and her husband. "
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
He contends that the paper wasn't a joke at all but that others classed it as such.
Read the actual complaints and you will see that this guy was being very creepy. This is more then just showing the article to a co-worker.
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If you read on he was cleared on everything except showing her the article.
This government is demonstrating it is still in the dark ages, where idiotic canned morals and ethics based on superstitious and largely fictional books still dictate the rules of state.
It's going to be a long, long haul getting rid of the "Sky Daddy" moralizers. Everywhere. In the meantime, the religiots will continue to look for contemporary alternatives to burning at the stake. Ruining one's career, and to some extent one's life... a fairly effective replacement, I'd say. A lifetime of suffering coupled with loss of ability to teach what one knows in an atmosphere of respect and personal and professional growth.
Fellatio in bats. What should be extremely interesting, is instead a hair trigger for idiots.
Sometimes I can go days without having to realize just how much I despise religion. And then something like this happens.
By the way, IRISH MORONS: Sex is good. Violence is bad. Imposed government/social censorship is MORONIC. Freedom for people to view what they CHOOSE and make their own decisions is the ONLY correct path through this mess. Is that convenient for everyone? Will everyone feel good about it? No. But it is still the BEST path. Because freedom of knowledge for everyone totally trumps anyone's moral qualms.
Teach your kids what you want to teach them. What you think is right. But don't attempt to sanitize the rest of the world in the shape of your morals and ethics. My kids are not your kids and you have NO right to impose your morals and ethics upon them. That's MY job. And I teach my kids that sex is good, and violence is bad. I'm not in the least interested in your goat-age, superstition-driven stupidity. Thanks.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. If all they could come up with was showing her the article, a scientific article... then the court is wrong, not him. He was cleared of the other charges. The only thing left was NOT creepy.
You know, it really pisses me off when people assume someone is guilty because they're in court, no more. Sure, there were charges, but they were NOT found to apply; and the only thing left was the COURT being creepy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It wasn't actually a court.
More one of those board of inquiry setups.
For which she provided no proof, and which were only mentioned in passing at the end of the complaint letter as an attempt to bolster her case. It also notes that the external examiners decided that the email exchanges between them that followed cast doubt on these allegation and did not uphold them.
In fact the only part of the complaint that was upheld was that he showed her a published peer-reviewed article in part of a debate on biology.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
I read the complaint, replies and rest of the documents. Made me miss the first period of Montreal @ Philadelphia.
The lack of evidence is staggering and mind-boggling. Who knows what really has been going on, but what I do know that the investigators or the president don't know anything that would be warrant a two-year monitoring and counseling period.
Let me repeat: not guilty.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
You need to read the detail - an investigation cleared him of sexual harrassment. The action taken against him is based on a paragraph in the investigation's findings where it states that the investigators found it reasonable that the complainant was offended by being shown the article as a joke when alone with the accused. The accused claims that they were not alone and the article was shown in the context of an ongoing acedemic debate.
The fact that the complainant's husband seems to be a high ranking official at the university makes me think that this guy could well be being treated unfairly.
What, with the batty old fruit?
According to this, she laughed and asked him for a copy when he showed it to her. Sounds like there's some sort of personal vendetta going on here.
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/ifut.pdf
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the only thing that makes me vote for the guy is the fact that she refused apology and counselling when it would've been best. In my opinion, that girl is as shy as a mouse, and the guy is a bit of a jerk, but that ain't a reason to apply a formal complaint without trying to resolve the issue by their own means..
Just what we need flying furry priests who enjoy fellatio.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
He showed someone a scientifically researched and published article, the content is irrelevant.
Sure sex is a touchy area, but this is a doctor, talking to others in his field.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Apparently I am really lenient guy. I read the summary real quick and thought he got fired for blowing fruit bats in front of other people and felt it was a bit extreme of a punishment.
Of course that might have something to do with the fact "two-year period of intensive monitoring and counseling imposed upon him" and "fellatio in fruit bats" happened to be on top of each other (no pun intended) in bold and italics.
I break out in shouting
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
But my paper topic was, "Fruity bats: population clusters in San Francisco and Provincetown, Mass.?" Academic freedom my ass...
That is not the point in these cases unfortunately. HR departments esp ones with affirmative action offices can often take unilateral action against you without any proof at all. The amount of power alloted against individuals in institutions by these and other offices on campus that are answerable to no one is unbelievable.
We had a case here that involved a woman getting a man's disabled parking permit taken away because he honked at her once in a parking garage, which she claimed was harassment.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
read TFA.
As you'd imagine he's not crazy about his career being fucked up by "sexually harassed co-worker" on his record with no warning or recourse.
simply saying that everyone was within their rights is true but at the same time it would also be true if she'd complained about an overly friendly handshake- she'd have every right to avail herself of a standard procedure to file a complaint and the president of the university would have every right to determine any course of action.
There are always the 'class clown' types who want to push the envelope of what is, and is not socially acceptable.
This is not a bad thing.
I hope he wins the Ignoble Prize. I think it would be a fitting honor. http://improbable.com/ig/
Remember the law passed not long ago making blasphemy illegal?
So, how long until people realizes that this has gone too far. Censorship IS a problem. religion and corporate interests account for most of the censorship out there. Copyright is nothing but a form of censorship.
Can we finally outlaw religion and copyright? We really need to ban and persecute all forms of religious beliefs. And we really need to get rid of copyright.
Only then we'll be truly free.
Now, go ahead and mod me troll or flamebait, but you all know I'm right.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I read that part, but bear in mind that the investigation does not show any collaborations of these claims.
He strikes me as a doctor who is overenthusiastic in his field, and doesn't understand that others may not share his same interest in behavioral psychology.
She strikes me as someone was was deeply offended by the article, decided his interest in it was creepy, and recast any prior experiences with him in that light.
But I could be wrong. All I have is the letters that were posted.
Is it politically correct to be for oral sex in fruit bats or against it? Could someone please explain?
Sexual harassment is a matter of unwelcome sexual advances or offensive treatment based on sexual themes. If she led him to believe they were welcome at some point, then she needed to inform him that they were not and give him an opportunity to stop. Otherwise, nearly every break-up of a couple could involve retroactive "harassment". There are, of course, things you don't do in certain cultures until you're sure they're okay with the other person. There are others that are not always as clear, and it would really help if people whose comfort levels with physical contact and certain discussion topics differ would talk about those before engaging in any sort of borderline acts. Kissing a friend on the cheek is pretty common, as is hugging. If they weren't friends or she's not okay with hugging friends, then both he and she should have sought to make that clear.
It sounds more like he thought they were friends and she thought of him as just a work acquaintance than that he was actually pursuing her. If that's the case, then he doesn't have to be a lecher to decide to kiss her on the cheek as a greeting or a farewell. That'd be a pretty serious misunderstanding on his part, but if she let it slide after the first couple of times then his understanding that it'd be okay would be reinforced. So it's actually pretty easy, if you take a step back from the accusation, to see how he could have been wrong but didn't intentionally do anything wrong toward her. Intent is usually a big part of the law in Western societies.
I think the board deciding to oversee his behavior for a while might not be such an overreaction. There is reason to be concerned about him. To be sure he intended to force himself on an unwilling victim I think would be jumping the gun. We have no evidence he knew she was unwilling, or even that she didn't become unwilling only after some point.
She laughed? So? Doesn't necessarily mean she was amused. Nervous laughter
And personal vendetta? Oh please. I read all the linked documents.
Dr. Evans sexually harassed a colleague who put up with it until she'd had enough. The investigators basically dismissed every part of her complaint save the bat fellatio paper incident that was the last straw. Dr. Evans of course is all sweetness and light and "I don't have the slightest idea how she took that to be harassment." and "I offered to apologize" and then "My doctor put me on a course of valium as I'm so stressed out because of all of this." (so now he's playing the victim, poor baby.) And the letter from the guy at the Irish Federation of University Teachers is just pathetic.
Dr. Evans managed to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone save the president of the university who saw through all of the bullshit and slapped Dr. Evans with what amounts to a 2 year probationary period with some sensitivity training. If Dr. Evans pulled a stunt like this in the states he'd have been out on his ass.
This poses no threat to academic discussion. If someone hasn't been sexually harassing their female colleagues then they're quite safe showing a paper about fellatio in fruit bats to their colleagues.
I'm from the US and not Ireland (and I'm not a lawyer here), but as I see it the problem here would be that the university doesn't have a right to do anything they want. They are responsible for the workplace they provide for their employees and the behavior of their employees. Once Employee A makes a formal complaint, the employer must investigate it and put Employee B on warning not to engage in the alleged behavior whether or not the alleged behavior actually happened in the past. Otherwise, the employer will get sued and possibly investigated criminally right along with the alleged perpetrator for allowing the behavior. Employers can be placed in a very distasteful situation either by someone harassing a coworker or someone making a frivolous complaint. It's often difficult to prove and even more difficult to disprove (how do you prove a negative without exhaustive search and perfect isolation outside of precisely approved channels?).
Some companies go so far as having a separate handbook for sexual harassment. Some even have training and certification classes on harassment (sexual and otherwise) to go right along with customer service standards, technical training, and office flow of paperwork standards.
Bullshit.
They threw out everything else because she was LYING and he was able to prove it with EVIDENCE like emails.
hehehe you said "staff"
it's made even more complex because of the fact that it was a scientific paper. the university act in ireland has some rules about what academics cannot be punished for on that score.
It bothers me that this comment and the comment above it (rated +4 Insightful and +4 Informative) don't show up, even in reduced form, while the Parent (rated +4 Informative) shows up when I first load the page. The way the comments are set up, it doesn't even appear as though these 2 comments exist.
In fact, when I hit the "More" replies link, 2 other comments pointing out that he was cleared of everything except showing her the article in reply to people saying he was a creeper also appear (and the replies are likewise rated +4).
I know it's random, but it just irks me when the standard comment layout presents one view and only one view while opposing replies are rated equally as well. ~sigh~
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I guess the lesson is, if you really want to harass someone and get away with it, use the HR department as a proxy.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
In any setting there are expectations of a professional level of behaviour, and he chose not to abide by them.
This guy is a Lecturer in Behavioural Science at a "supposed" School of Medicine!! What do you think his ***profession*** requires of him? What do you think he's paid to do? Is he required to discuss morally safe topics? Is he required to only talk about the Little House on the Prairie and other PG-Safe topics? What would be the point?
The transmission of diseases rarely limits itself to PG-13 safe topics. Vectors of disease transmissions are rarely that palatable, or clean. A behavioral scientist in a school of medicine is, of course, going to study and lecture about abnormal behaviors. Whatever it is: Eating feces, promiscuity, infections, fellatios, incest, etc. I wouldn't expect anything else from the talks of a behavioral scientist in a "supposed" School of Medicine.
No one in academia can claim not to understand where the line is drawn when interacting with other colleagues.
This word "academia", as accurate as it may be in this case, loses the most salient underlying context. This is not an Art School, or even an English Lit School, the Science of Medicine is an infinitely more practical, pragmatic, and less clean professional environment, than what you would normally find in other Ivory Towers. And for good reasons. When someone gets squimish in Art History, nothing bad happens, but when someone gets squimish in Medicine, people die.
"It was just a joke" has long since ceased to be an adequate excuse for offensive behaviour.
And yes, the accused is taking issue with the "bad joke" interpretation. He's even taking to task one of the investigators for some of the things he said during the investigation. One would think that a panel of faculty members would be a little more willing to find out the facts, and interview witnesses (which they haven't done yet), instead of just editorializing their personal opinions and rendering subjective interpretations.
BTW, the male appendage seemed to be nearly the length of his body. Top that.
Dr. Evans managed to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone save the president of the university who saw through all of the bullshit and slapped Dr. Evans with what amounts to a 2 year probationary period with some sensitivity training. If Dr. Evans pulled a stunt like this in the states he'd have been out on his ass.
Here, let me fetch you a hose to get the giant wad of sand out of your vagina.
Now that we've sorted that little problem out, let me tell you about a lecturer at my old university. He was a great guy, great programmer, a hacker in the old sense of the word (to the point that all of his web site scripting was done in CGI models written in C). From what I heard, he was in line for head of department, until he pointed out that one of the other lecturers was about as useful and competent as tits on a bull. He was absolutely right, this staff member was abominable and couldn't teach a kindergarten class about crayons, much less teach a 3rd year computing unit. Sadly, she managed to fabricate a harassment claim which not only diverted attention from her own total lack of competence, but also ended his chances for any kind of promotion.
There's nothing more dangerous to an intellectually honest academic than a female co-worker who knows she's incompetent and is prepared to use sexual discrimination or harassment claims as a weapon.
It is interesting to see how you list fellatios together with fece eating and incest. And yet still try to present yourself as nonbiased intelectual, taking academic point of view on this article.
Maybe it means something different in the US, but in the UK (and I imagine much of Europe, since most European countries have similar labour laws), "put employee B on warning" has a specific meaning which shouldn't be taken lightly.
It implies that a record is taken of this warning and it may have a significant impact in future disciplinary investigations.
It follows from this that a vindictive woman can get a male colleague sacked simply by making an accusation of (completely fictional) sexual harassment. Even if it doesn't work the first time, if the allegation is repeated a few months later it probably will because now the person she's accusing has a record with HR.
(I'm not saying that no HR department would wind up doing something like that - I'm sure it's happened, and more than once - but we should be wary of becoming so sensitive to some issues that as soon as they come about the accuser is put on a pedestal as some sort of poor unfortunate and the accused is to be reviled as the anti-christ).
It is just silly because it shows that academic freedom is not protected as elsewhere in the world.
Futhermore it is hard for me to understand what this case has to do with "political correctness". I don't understand what is political incorrect about it.
What are they supposed to call them, Well Groomed Bats, or Barbara's Bats? Don't ask don't tell bats?
Unfortunately the same thing can happen in the US. The company would likely not do much investigation, either, unless they feared the lawyer of the accused more than the lawyer of the accuser. It seems it would usually be safer (no stats to show, just a feeling) to side with the accuser, especially if it's a woman accusing a man. As I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread, sexual harassment that isn't a man harassing a woman has a very different response from many people.
If you follow the links, you'll see that only 70% of the female fruit bats do it. This is consistent with the widely known fact that most humans will burn in Hell, but some will be saved. Repent!
Seriously now, another very concerning note in the Huffington Post article was this link. Apparently a student in a university can be prosecuted not only for writing something, but also for reading a book from the university library.
I changed my settings to always fetch the whole discussion an once. Browsing at -1 is way more fun anyway.
To me it sounds like the good Dr. has done an admirable job of 'spin control'.
Read her allegations. They are just that, allegations, but dispense with Dr. Evans interpretation of events, and read it for what it is.
Dr. Evans engaged in what most of us would recognize as relatively sophomoric antics and flirtation - repeatedly engaging the complainant in discussions of a sexual nature, about Casanova, and ultimately showing her (I assume with much Junior-high-school snickering) an article on fellatio in Fruit Bats.
It IS possible that all of this was just an unfortunate set of coincidences, showing nothing more than an autistic-level of disconnectedness by Dr. Evans in not understanding the context of the repeated discussions.
Considerably more likely is the Dr. Evans had a serious boner for the alleged victim, and engaged in the sorts of feeble things 7th grade boys would do to try to 'spark' some interest in 'that hot girl' - with arguably similar results...she is shocked, disgusted, and goes running to the teacher crying "GROSS!".
If the subsequent dinner "double date" was accurately represented in the reportage, as well as a YEAR of such antics, she (and the school administration) are entirely vindicated.
I congratulate Dr. Evans on his ability to form a groundswell of public opinion in his behalf by mischaracterizing the event as some sort of Puritanical effort to "stifle academic freedom", a message which rings so readily in the ears of the political leanings of so many here on slashdot that its readily believed contrary to the actual reports. I'm sure he can look forward to many job offers from political parties looking for media consultants.
I'd however recommend to both of them that they perhaps make sure Dr. Evans isn't working with any women.
-Styopa
That doesn't make sense (not saying it didn't happen that way). If Evans did in fact sexually harass a coworker, then his probation should be for such. Instead he is on probation for sharing a scientific article. If there was something else offensive taking place which was prompted by the sharing of the article, that should have been stated as the reason for the probation. Sounds like they can't get him for what he actually did, so they're arbitrarily penalizing him for something barely related. Sounds like shenanigans to me.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Not funny. How about posting something relevant.
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Technically, we are beyond survival.
Your sexist post isn't funny. How about pointing out that a male co-worker is incompetent? You think you wouldn't get fired for that too, you moron?
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
Now, sharing this article could have been just fine, if not for his particular delivery.
See, he didn't just forward this article via e-mail or inter-office memo - he delivered it, in person, dressed up in a Batman costume, and quoted the song lyrics "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals"
Somewhere in there I think he may have crossed the line.
Bow-ties are cool.
Editorializing and rendering subjective interpretations is what we do around here.
Hopefully, you can tell the difference between a panel of Academic investigators investigating a very serious accusation and the rambles of a random poster on Slashdot.
they wouldn't be able to use sex as a tool to destroy you, so at least they'd have to destroy you based on your actual actions.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I think you missed the part, "and asked him for a copy when he showed it to her." Nervous request for a copy?
While I certainly agree that it's terrible when any claim of sexual harassment is blown off, the fact is that people are more on the lookout for harassment claims by men against women because... the overwhelming majority of sexual harassment cases are committed by men against women. And "a dangerous time to be a man"? Right. Clearly, the experience of female workers, including harassment, intimidation, stalking, and in some cases, outright rape on the job is nothing compared to horrors of having your tenure application denied. How about getting a sense of perspective here. A dangerous time to be a man? I got news for you, buddy - it's ALWAYS been a dangerous time to be a woman.
That is not the point in these cases unfortunately. HR departments esp ones with affirmative action offices can often take unilateral action against you without any proof at all.
Not quite. I remember a woman being accused of theft of a cell phone, punished, and severely slandered/libeled by her HR department. And she eventually won a huge judgment against her former employer (I don't know if the amount was upheld on appeal, it probably wasn't, but it was something like 40 million dollars). Granted, she could produce a receipt and credit card transactions predating the incident and proving her innocence beyond the shadow of a doubt, but my point is that the company paid dearly for not even checking the facts that the accused was alleging at the time before even issuing their punishment.
In this case, it would seem the investigators didn't even interview the supposed witness. This can be really problematic in a case like that. Had they interviewed him/her at least, and then dismissed his/her story, that's one thing, but not even interviewing a key witness, and then issuing sanctions anyway -- that's completely irresponsible.
In the US, a company (even a University) would be stupid to do something like that, as it would be opening itself up for all kinds of liability and penalties. In Ireland, where punitive damages are non-existent, it might not be as risky, but then again, workers rights are much more significant over there.
Good point :)
Quiet little boy. The adults are trying to have a conversation.
I was having a nice talk about when violence is a good thing, and you started making noise about how ignorant you are and how highly you value your own opinions.
You should really follow your own advice.
The person who modded that 'troll" is clearly abusing the moderation system.
You can't take the sky from me...
Thanks. :)