What Spotlighting Harassment In Astronomy Means

StartsWithABang writes: Geoff Marcy. Tim Slater. Christian Ott. And a great many more who are just waiting to be publicly exposed for what they've done (and in many cases, are still doing). Does it mean that astronomy has a harassment problem? Of course it does, but that's not the real story. The real story is that, for the first time, an entire academic field is recognizing a widespread problem, taking steps to change its policies, and is beginning to support the victims, rather than the senior, more famous, more prestigious perpetrators. Astronomy is the just start; hopefully physics, computer science, engineering, philosophy and economics are next.

Comments

Who? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are these people? Why did you separate a list of names with periods?
What did they (allegedly) do? How do you know there are "a great many more" who have done, and are still doing, the same?

For bonus points:
When were these things done?
Where were they done?
Why? How?

FUCK!

Re:Who? What?

[Mr. Shotgun]

Trying to vaguely synthesize a "problem" may work in other circles, but hard science doesn't want to hear that there's "some kind of thing going on, maybe", it wants facts, places, numbers, reproducible events, documentation, data, something real, something tangible.

Hell I would settle for some correlation at least:

Is the rate of sexual harassment higher for $field than it is for the general population?

If it is then maybe there is more research to be done to discover why and try to correct it.
If not then there is not a problem in $field, there is an asshole problem. And you deal with the asshole problem by getting rid of the assholes and not blaming the field the assholes happen to work in.
(disclaimer: I am not calling anyone from TFA an asshole, just stating in general)

Re:Of course it does

[NotDrWho]

Yes, for the the snowflakes who consider the sentence "I disagree with you" to be hate speech, I must be a monster.

Re:Here we go.

[LaurenCates]

Well, you see, son, there's this group that raised a bunch of strawmen, and a group that didn't like being picked on by that one group created strawmen of their own, and every so often one side puts their strawman up in a field and demands highway travelers just passing through to help burn down their strawman, to show those guys over there how awful they are, and they should repent.

And then the other side sees this, flags down the traveler, and says "yeah, their strawman sucks, but here, burn down ours; it'll make you feel better about that strawman since that other strawman there was a commentary about YOU, friendly and possibly disenfranchised traveler."

Said traveler raises brows, alarmed, mutters, "Not my circus, not my monkeys" and promptly floors the pedal.

Both sides are filled with first-world-problem-ridden douchebags that want to act like ignorant assholes without being called on it. Both sides think they're doing the right thing.

Everyone else ain't got time for this shit, until it invades their space.

Oh, look, it's time to gather straw. Anyone got a few extra flannel shirts lying around?

Agreed, we should stop harassment

[russotto]

First of all, we should stop the harassment of astronomers and astrophysicists just because they wore tacky shirts in a press conference. Once we're satisfied that's been settled (say, 5 years with no incidents), we can start working on the rest.

Re:Here we go.

[epyT-R]

That's the kind of mentality that leads to witchhunts and dark ages. Stable societies depend on free flow of the truth, regardless of how upsetting it might be to some.