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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.
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
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
keep reading: he was cleared on everything except the article.
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.
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How do you argue that violence is inherently bad?
Emotions! In your brain!
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
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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Just what we need flying furry priests who enjoy fellatio.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
He provided evidence such as emails which didn't match with her account so they went with his account.
Read the material.
There's links to the various letters back and forth in 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.
1:He wasn't screwing the person.
2:This wasn't an undergraduate or student of any kind.
This was another academic at the university.
And the medical faculty at that.
If a professor in the School of Medicine can't walk into another academics office and show them a peer reviewed paper about fruitbats that pretty much rules out showing them more shocking papers about anal warts and STD's.
He also showed it to a few other people on the way over and the other person in the office at the time.
You can shit on academic freedom all you want but if doctors can't talk about peer reviewed scientific papers which might embarrass the fragile sensibilities of someone where they work then they're not going to be able to do their job for fear of being accused of destroying the mind of the office wallflower.
Is it politically correct to be for oral sex in fruit bats or against it? Could someone please explain?
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.