Not about fruitbatsex

I don't often read BoingBoing any more because the design, although modified STILL SHOUTS AT ME and I just can't bear it. However, Oclee pointed out a story about an academic who, according to the story on BoingBoing, has been accused of sexual harrassment by a colleague because he showed her a peer reviewed paper about fellatio between fruit bats.

The implication of this article, and of the blog which apparently originally publicised the story, PZMyers, was that if showing adult colleagues a peer-reviewed paper could possibly constitute sexual harassment, the end of academic freedom was nigh, and the sky was falling.

The BoingBoing article contained links to the paperwork in the case, the original statement by Dr Evans's colleague. In this, as you can see, she asserted that there had been inappropriate behaviour from Dr Evans on other occasions, and he was often at pains to engage her in unwanted conversations about a range of things, including Casanova, and fruitbatsex.

Whether these assertions are justified or not, I have no idea, but someone thought it was right to publicise the case, and the outcome, because they disagreed with it.

I have no special knowledge of the case, or of the people involved, but I know myself that even when behaviour is very intimidating and sexually aggressive, it can be hard to put together any form of evidence. I once worked with a man who took every opportunity to squeeze past female staff, making as much contact as possible. It seemed inevitable that, if one had to negotiate a tight corner, he would suddenly arrive and need to squeeze past.

He talked about the "morals of young people today" and seemed under the impression that anyone under the age of 25 (this was the 1970s) was likely to fall into bed with anyone, at the slightest encouragement. He seemed to think that talking about it might persuade young girls to throw themselves at his feet.

He frequently grabbed necklaces from inside t-shirts, and made up spurious rules for young women employees to follow.

To me, at the age of 19, he seemed slimy and objectionable, but I couldn't imagine that anyone would seriously act upon my opinion, and so I put up with his behaviour and left as soon as I could.

Some people are inclined to sing the "political correctness gone mad!" song in relation to this - or any - case of sexual harassment, but sometimes, a string of possibly unrelated incidents from one person's point of view, adds up to something much bigger. Sometimes it has seemed to me that someone is completely unaware of the effect that their constant attention has had on a woman... on other occasions it has been completely obvious that someone knows and revels in the fact that they are affecting the other person in an adverse way.

I don't know if Dr Evans did or did not sexually harass this woman, but I dislike the fact that he seems unable to accept that she may have seen his approaches to her as anything less than positive. He has commented multiple times on the comment thread on the PZMyers blog, and seems to be basking in the attention, on his own website and on twitter.

It seems that fruitbatgate is about to get attention from the New Scientist and other publications... it will be interesting to see if the reporting is any more balanced than the article in the Irish Times.

In a final note, it seems that some of the thousands of people who rushed to sign a petition in favour of Dr Evans, have reconsidered that in the light of the full story. I'm somewhat at a loss to understand how anyone felt it was right to interfere in what was a private disciplinary matter, and I have to wonder who leaked the documents originally.

Anti-science, pro-homeopathy

I don't really read BoingBoing any more, except when I mosey on over to make a suggestion for an item, but I spotted the article about the 10:23 event in Boots, and it made me very cross.

The group describe themselves as pro-science, anti-homeopathy as though those two things go together hand-in-hand. The reason I feel cross about it, is that I have personal experience of homeopathy which leads me to think it has a discernible effect, even though convetional medicine cannot tell me what it is. Conventional medicine can't explain the effect in acupuncture either.

It is the arrogance of people who say they are pro-science, believing that they can use logic to decide whether or not homeopathy is effective, rather than science, even though they profess to be pro-science. You can't. A lot of things which don't seem to make sense are scientifically proven, not least the behaviour of water, which is central to homeopathic method.

There are so many complex things tied up in my response to this protest. Firstly, no-one is forcing them to use or take homeopathic medicines... but that's not good enough for them, they want to prevent other people from using them. Even if the effect in homeopathy is solely part of the placebo effect - and I don't think it is, personally - there are no side effects or drawbacks to homeopathic medicine, which is more than can be said for most allopathic medicines.

And finally... they may be mistaken. New Scientist reported last year that experiments in Belfast designed to prove once and for all that there could be nothing in homeopathy in fact proved the opposite - that there may be an effect which is not understood by science. It seems to me that there may be something very important to be learned about the way that substances interact with water, which could be scientifically established.

Unfortunately, this group are too busy trying to impose their views on you and me to actually look at the science. It's very useful to have a group of people who can tell without experimentation, without experience, without any specialist knowledge, what will work and what won't. It doesn't seem terrifically scientific though.

I hate arrogance, and I hate people who profess one point of view while living another. And I don't like being told what I can and can't do. In any case, as I pointed out on the BoingBoing comment thread, 180,000 people were apparently killed by their stay in hospital last year. It is possible for a person to kill themselves by discontinuing needed medication and only taking homeopathy, but I really don't think homeopathic treatment will have killed anyone. That alone is reason enough to demand the choice of using it.

Broken by fixing it up

Once upon a dark and distant time, I heard people mention BoingBoing and I didn't know what they were talking about. That was about six years ago. I was introduced to Boing Boing and lo! I saw that it was good.

Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine logging into my computer without checking BoingBoing. That was about a year ago. I knew the names of the bloggers, I could navigate my way around the archives or the past week, I posted the occasional comment - not too often, just when something grabbed me. I made a few suggestions, and some of them were taken up.



Boingboing is heralded as a directory of wonderful things... and it was. Not all of the things were wonderful, some of them were pretty devastatingly not wonderful at all, like the reports on miscarriages of justice, the growth of CCTV and the demonising of photography, but what was most definitely wonderful was the way in which you could sometimes see a story and know, just know that the comments would have you howling with laughter, or inhaling your morning cup of coffee - or blowing it all over your keyboard.

The people who met in the comments queue on Boingboing recognised each other, and could see who in the archives was a brother or sister soul who shared the concern about Guantanamo, or the despair at the re-election of Bush. Intelligent, articulate, clever, sceptical people, who wrote great one liners and better paragraphs.

But now, now... they redesigned it, and it seems irretrievably broken. Not for everyone, maybe. For me. I can't navigate around the new design, I can't find my friends, or at least the people I saw everyday and now can't find for the same stupid comments you find on 1001 blogs on a 1,000,001 webpages elsewhere on the internet. Instead of being elegant and simple and letting the blog content do the talking, it SHOUTS AT YOU really loudly, with LOUD colours and loud headings and even LOUDER people commenting.


It isn't that they have changed the content particularly, but they seem to have taken away my ability to navigate easily from place to place, and somehow it looks all wrong, and isn't something I want to spend time looking at. How can this be? It's amazing what a huge difference it has made... it has turned it from a place I coudn't imagine not visiting regularly, to somewhere I never want to visit. Very strange. I expect that they want younger readers, more readers, to attract attention. Maybe they've achieved that. But they've lost one regular reader, and I miss my old BoingBoing. I'm off to the internet WayBack machine to see if I can find it anywhere.

I've done that...

I have to admit that I only occasionally get the joke with XKCD, as I am not a techie or programmer. Today's cartoon, which I first saw on boingboing, is something that most people who spend any time online will resonate with.

As I quite often say to my children as I tear them apart... sometimes it doesn't matter who is right, you just have to agree to differ. It's hard to remember sometimes though, very hard.