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The Sexual Misconduct Case That Has Rocked Anthropology (sciencemag.org)

Posted by timothy on from the digging-up-bones dept.

sciencehabit writes: An investigative report in Science describes allegations of sexual misconduct against noted paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond, as well as the field's response. The story highlights a major shift in how academic communities deal with sexual misconduct, going beyond delineating rules on paper to striving to change the culture of the field at the institutional level. This shift – "a long time coming," according to many researchers – was spurred in part by recent high-profile cases in astronomy and biology. Now, as Balter notes, "paleoanthropology is responding to its own complex case." The first public allegation against Richmond, the curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, inspired a cascade of other allegations about him. This in turn motivated several senior paleoanthropologists, including one of Richmond's key mentors, Bernard Wood, to explore the allegations with peers. "As I talked to more and more current and former students at [George Washington University]," Wood said, "I became more concerned and alarmed about what I heard." In light of their findings, Wood and others in the field of anthropology are now tackling sexual misconduct head-on. The article details additional institutional efforts to stop sexual misconduct in science while trying to balance the rights of victims and accused, and provides the latest update on investigations into Richmond.

5 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. What? by softnewsit · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is one of the most vague summaries I ever read here... #wtf

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    Go away!
    1. Re:What? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your're forgetting this is another fluff piece by timothy.

      Nothing to see. Move along.

  2. Re:"sexual misconduct"? by Alan+Shutko · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA. It means: "kissing her and groping under her skirt" while the woman wakes up from blacking out. It means "Dr. Richmond smiled and grabbed P1[’s] breast,”. It means "put his arm around me, and plunged his hand down the back of my skirt all the way to my thighs, and forcefully grabbed my posterior,". And all of this happened while Richmond was an instructor in the program and had a position of authority over the women involved.

  3. Re:TL;DR by quantaman · · Score: 1, Informative

    Male, therefore guilty.

    Yeah I'm sure it's just a bunch of women with no obvious connections engaging in a giant conspiracy for no apparent reason like they did to Bill Cosby.

    Most importantly your automatic assumption that the man innocent and is only being persecuted for his gender, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, is in no way evidence that you might be sexist.

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    I stole this Sig
  4. Re:"sexual misconduct"? by nbauman · · Score: 5, Informative

    It means "put his arm around me, and plunged his hand down the back of my skirt all the way to my thighs, and forcefully grabbed my posterior,".

    If you gave the whole quote, it would mean something else:

    This witness, who admits that she was "properly drunk," wrote that she put her hand around Richmond's waist while he "continued to fondle my bottom." Shortly afterwards, she related, Richmond "pulled me away from the circle" and "kissed me quite passionately," asking her to go to a more remote spot and have sex with him. But she was not interested and declined, slipping away to her friends.

    They were standing around a bonfire, they were drinking, she was drinking a lot, he made a pass at her, she responded favorably, he continued, she declined, and he left her alone.

    This is normal sexual behavior in modern western cultures.

    These are fucking anthropologists. They're supposed to understand mating rituals.