UCC Treats Evolution As Harassment?

by Donal Tue Nov 09, 2010 05:00

Discussion about this sad, complicated topic has turned into a proxy boxing match slugged out punch-drunkenly by weary and wearisome ideological warriors. A humanitarian ref would intervene at this stage and declare the battle a draw, so that the seconds could arrange for bruises to be balmed in an atmosphere of healing calm.

by Demure Lemur Mon Nov 08, 2010 22:43 demurelemur at live dot co dot uk

First of all, I share Oh Really's amazement at the web of untruth that Evan's supporters have weaved around his fictional exoneration.

I'm also very impressed with Fembot's investigation into the leaking of the documents, which casts serious doubts on Evans' credibility. The campaign of media and cyber bullying spearheaded by Evans is the most fascinating and incredible aspect of this case.

Finally, I am disheartened, though not, of course, surprised, that Bock the Robber continues to toe his misogynistic line on this issue, proffering a selective quotation from the inquiry findings to suggest that Evans was cleared of both counts of sexual harrassment made against him. This is patently untrue. The first complaint (the actions of Dr. Evans up to November 2nd) was not upheld, and it was noted that the complaint was not malicious. The second complaint (the actions of Dr. Evans on Nov. 2nd) was upheld, and it was noted that the harassment was not intentional. To set the record straight, I'll continue the quoting from the document where Bock left off:

'...We cannot therefore find that any of the actions of Dr. Evans up to November 2nd 2009 constituted sexual harassment and do not therefore uphold those complaints. It is clear however that these complaints are not malicious.

However, on 2 November 2009 it is a fact that Dr. Evans showed Dr. Salerno-Kennedy an academic article which Dr. Salerno-Kennedy claims was inappropriate and offensive and which made her feel hurt and disgusted. Dr. Evans was emphatic in saying that Dr. Salerno-Kennedy showed no such signs and on the contrary was amused and requested a copy. The question for us is whether Dr. Evans' action can reasonably be regarded as sexually offensive, humiliating or intimidating to Dr. Salerno-Kennedy. We find that the action was a joke with sexual innuendo and it was reasonable for Dr. Salerno-Kennedy to be offended by being presented with it in her office alone. We therefore find that the complaint on this action is upheld though it was not Dr. Evans' intention to cause offence'

by Bock the Robber Wed Nov 03, 2010 21:52 bocktherobber at gmail dot com

Saxon, if Evans was found guilty of sexual harassment, the inquiry had a very strange way of saying so:

"We cannot therefore find that any of the actions of Dr Evans up to 2 November 2009 constituted sexual harassment and do not therefore uphold those complaints."

by Fembot Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:36

The Campaign of Press and Internet Bullying

The "campaign to clear" Dylan Evans began on the internet, it was taken up by the print and broadcast media and has continued on the internet. The issue was never one of academic freedom, nor of misunderstood gender interaction. The issue is of an individual unable to perceive appropriate boundaries and unable to recognize fault in his own behaviour, who perpetuates grudges through sustained bullying and harassment through any channel available to him. A version of events describing Evans' perspective and for which Evans is the sole named source was printed on Monday 17th May in the Times Higher Education Supplement http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyco...11642 the Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/lecturer-fights....html and the Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article71...1.ece

By Tuesday the 18th May news stories had named the complainant in the Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/woman-in-batsex....html the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279338/Dr-Dyla....html and elsewhere.

By the 23rd May printed news stories had described the complainant's character, commented on her relationship with her husband, speculated about office intrigues (and an alleged court case), described her career ambitions and divulged her home address (Irish Mail on Sunday). Dylan Evans was, again, the sole named source for these stories.

The exposure of these invasive personal details, relating to a confidential workplace complaint, are trivial in comparison to comments made about the complainant (and women in general) across blogs and discussion forums - some of which are explicitly identified as Dylan Evans, or as "evansd66", while others are speculatively identified as Evans under pseudonym within the discussions.

The Petition

Dylan Evans contacted a number of bloggers (credit is given to Steven Pinker, Greg Lukianoff and Stephen Kinsella) and created an online petition on 14 May 2010. This consisted of a reasonably detailed letter and a link to the petition, "Dear Colleagues, ..., I have created an online petition at (link)"

This was posted by Greg Lukianoff on May 14, 2010 01:26 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/sex-fruit-....html and by a "Rolf_Harris" on Sat May 15, 2010 12:46 am (with a link to Lukianoff's blog) on the UCC student forum http://bb.ucc.ie/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=20108%29 and by PZ Myers on his own blog on May 15, 2010 7:30 AM http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/bat_sex_is_n...c.php

As a point of general credibility, "Dr Evans had earlier denied to The Irish Times that he had started an online petition seeking support for the overturning of earlier sanctions imposed by Dr Murphy. He said he suspected a friend was behind the petition but he had tried to protect the friend’s identity by passing it off as his own." http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0519/1....html

The Complaint and Letters

Greg Lukianoff posted at 12:14 PM on 5/16/2010 "Okay, I just received the official documentation from Professor Evans. You can judge for yourself: http://fel­idware.com­/DylanEvan­s/." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/sex-fruit-....html although this was not the initial release of the confidential documents.

Much earlier (a full day earlier), "grania.0" posted on May 15, 2010 at 11:47 AM (comment #48) "However, he has been very open and has posted the original official complaint & several other relevant documents in full on his Facebook page" http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/bat_sex_is_n...15305 and later within the same thread "dutchdoc" posted on May 15, 2010 at 3:46 PM (comment #124) "After some poking around I can now make that information available (thanks: ). You can find it here: http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/" http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/bat_sex_is_n...15657

Just to be sure that everyone at UCC could view the same confidential documents, "SU-DeputyPresident" posted on Sun May 16, 2010 1:32 am "I've just read everything on this page http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/ - very interesting altogether." http://bb.ucc.ie/viewtopic.php?p=271326#p271326

In other words the documents appeared on Dylan Evans own Facebook page (and in a YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbnERoFtUQ) at an early stage, and were widely assumed to have originated with Dylan Evans - "These doc’s were most definitely posted online by Mr Evans, who is now also claiming that he did not start the online petition either." http://www.stephenkinsella.net/2010/05/18/fruitbatgate/...14119

When the threat of disciplinary action for breach of confidence emerged, Evans immediately denied the leak "@glukianoff - however, it would be more accurate to state that the documentation re: #fruitbatgate was posted online by someone else 5:40 PM May 18th via web in reply to glukianoff - evansd66 Dylan Evans" http://twitter.com/evansd66/status/14261157279 and ensured that Lukianoff modified his wording "@glukianoff Thanks for upating your my post on #fruitbatgate @huffpostcollege as the story develops http://huff.to/bMWoGW 12:39 AM May 19th via web in reply to glukianoff - evansd66 Dylan Evans" http://twitter.com/evansd66/status/14261100055

And what next? He blamed the complainant: "The lecturer in behavioural science at the School of Medicine denies releasing the information. "There's no evidence. Lots of people could have released it, including the claimant."" http://www.corkindependent.com/local-news/local-news/uc...vans/ http://www.corkindependent.com/editorial/editorial/full...acts/ ; he imagined a vast conspiracy of which he was the victim "# Dylan Evans 29 May, 2010 We still don't know who leaked the confidential documents. It could be someone hostile to me who is trying to smear me. Or it could be someone friendly to me who realised that their publication online would show how unfairly I was treated by UCC. If it is the latter, the person who leaked the documents was very brave. In 1969, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times, knowing that this could well lead to him being sent to prison for the rest of his life. He put justice above his personal interests. Nixon then ordered the "White House plumbers" to break in to the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to look for information to discredit him. At his trial, Ellsberg faced a maximum sentence of 115 years. Judge Byrne dismissed all the charges due to the government's gross misconduct and illegal evidence gathering. http://bit.ly/jUu1e" http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyco...11784 ; and played the role of internet sleuth "# Dylan Evans 29 May, 2010 Willie - When I was first alerted to the appearance of the documents online, I downloaded them to see if I could gain any clues as to who leaked them. I then posted the documents to my Facebook page. Later, when they had been posted to a number of other websites, some friends suggested that I take them down from my FB page, so I did. Thanks for your concern regarding my digital security! You are a true friend." http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyco...11784

Calling for the President's resignaton was clearly a useful flourish: "Dylan Evans is running for President of University College Cork. He calls for Murphy to resign over the #fruitbatgate scandal 3:56 PM May 18th via web - evansd66 Dylan Evans" http://twitter.com/evansd66/statuses/14235336351

His credibility was lost before he even made his denials Posted by: Justin in Higher Ed on May 16th, 2010 Unfortunately, the details of this are solely coming from Dr. Evans, who has launched a petition and a youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbnERoFtUQ of select documents and has even made up a twitter hashtag, all portraying this as an academic freedom issue. A full posting of the documents challenges his claim of academic freedom, however. http://pulsatance.com/2010/05/16/sexual-harassment-is-n...edom/

Thanks

Thanks primarily to Sven DiMilo who posted on May 19, 2010 1:03 PM (comment #565) "The petition was posted on Friday May 14th. Links to the documents (and dance vid!) are now on the petition site but it's not clear when they were added. A signatory mentions reading the investigators report on the 15th. The first reference to the documents being posted online that I know of was in comment #48 above by ‘grantia.o’ (a possible Dylan Evans sockpuppet): “However, he [Evans] has been very open and has posted the original official complaint & several other relevant documents in full on his Facebook page”.That was just before noon (blogtime) Saturday the 15th. PZ’s post went up about 4 hours earlier, but Lukianoff‘s Huffington Post thing had been up the afternoon before (and he got it from Pinker!). The documents were then linked—at the felidware site-- from here by dutchdoc in #124 (15th, 3:46 pm) after “some poking around”. The ‘fruitbatgate’ dance-track video featuring scans of the documents was posted by ‘evansd66’ on the 16th. The Huffington Post article was updated apparently on the 17th; the language used was : “I just received the official documentation from Professor Evans. You can judge for yourself: http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/.” It’s not clear who set up the felidware site, and exactly when, but it hardly matters if the documents were posted to Facebook by Evans first." http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/bat_sex_is_n...27308

A History of Denial and Relationship Issues

Needless offence, in the name of "academic freedom": This week, Dylan Evans, a research student at the London School of Economics, had to recall his book Introducing Evolutionary Psychology after a wrangle with biologist Steven Rose, a leading opponent of genetic determinism. Rose, professor of biology at the Open University, complained about a caricature of him in the book. Opposite a picture of the 19th-century eugenicist Francis Galton saying "Geniuses and idiots are born, not made" is a cartoon of Rose with a speech bubble stating that intelligence is determined entirely by a person's environment. "That is a fatuous statement, and attributing it to me is prejudicial to my reputation as a scholar," Rose said. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCo...de=26

Scorn for his own supporters' freedom of speech: "Today's prominent atheists - people such as Jonathan Miller and Richard Dawkins - hawk around a belief system that reeks of the 19th century, which is not surprising, for that is when it was born. Dawkins is virulently anti-religious, passionately pro-science and artistically illiterate - thus manifesting all three of the main characteristics of the old atheism in a particularly pure form. His attacks on religion are so vitriolic and bad-tempered that they alienate the sensitive reader and give atheism a bad name. As a friend of mine once commented, no other atheist has done more for the cause of religion than Richard Dawkins." Dylan Evans http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/may/02/comment.r...igion

Because Evans has exploited his "girlfriend in the same department", "forthcoming marriage" and "girlfriend who has stood by me" on a number of occasions, it seems appropriate to note that Oh, and if that wasn't enough, in February he got married - rather suddenly, in the potato shed - to a nice girl from London called Boe with a son called Zen and a daughter called Rainbow. Not surprisingly, his old friends were sceptical. "The whole thing was bonkers, completely mad," says Romay. "He's a lovely man and fabulously clever, but he doesn't have a practical bone in his body. I kept telling him - we'd all been there, done that, back in the Seventies, anyway." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-465271/The-ai....html - which itself followed an earlier failed marriage “He laughs when I ask if it is the product of a midlife crisis; the 39-year-old, who was married briefly in his twenties to an Argentinian archaeologist, is recently out of a long-term relationship, with no professorship on the horizon (although a chair “wouldn’t tempt me in the slightest”).” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article...2.ece

The inability to accept fault in the failed Utopia Experiment, in which the commune members (who appear to be research subjects, or lab mice as "Agric" says, in Dylan Evans' mind) throw out Evans after a few months http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-465271/The-ai....html

The much-criticized and shelved 1996 Channel 4 documentary “Psychoanalyzing Diana”, for which Evans would possibly have been censured by both the British Psychiatric Association and the British Psychological Society, had he (a practising analyst) been a registered practitioner http://www.bmj.com/content/312/7040/1234.2.extract

The "censored" article "commissioned by the Sunday Telegraph but then AXED because they thought it might infringe the new legislation in Britain against "glorifying terrorism". Judge for yourself - do YOU think it glorifies terrrorism, or do you think the Sunday Telegraph was being overly sensitive? Is this kind of self-censorship an ominous sign of things to come in the new Britain?" http://www.dylan.org.uk/unabomber.html

by Oh, Really? Thu Oct 21, 2010 09:55

It is astounding that Dylan Evans and his various mouthpieces have begun claiming that he has been "vindicated" (http://twitter.com)/evansd66 and "exonerated" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Evans) - a statement created by "Nomoskedasticity", the Greek for "Sockpuppet" (contributor profile at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contr...icity).

President of UCC wrote to Dr Evans saying "It is clear that the sexual harassment complaint in respect of the second matter was indeed upheld. ... The investigators have upheld one of [the complainant's] complaints ... one allegation was upheld ... As a complaint of sexual harassment against you has been upheld, it is now for me to decide whether to invoke the Disciplinary Procedures against you ... Behaviour of this type is utterly unacceptable within the University".

23rd March, 2010.

Strictly Private & Confidential
Addressee Only

Dr. Dylan Evans,
Lecturer in Behavioural Science,
School of Medicine,
University College,
Cork.

Dear Dr. Evans,

Reference is made to your letter of 25 February.

I cannot agree with the assertion in your letter that "the investigators have not upheld the complaint of sexual harassment".

The Report addresses two allegations of sexual harassment which were complained of by [the complainant]. On the first of the matters, interactions between you and [the complainant] up to 2 November 2009, the Report concluded that you:

"did not ever intend to cause offence to [the complainant]. He was not aware that he may have been causing offence by visiting her office and [the complainant] admit that she was not sufficiently assertive in making clear her displeasure at his visits to her office or other behaviour. We cannot therefore find that any of the actions of Dr. Evans up to 2 November 2009 constituted sexual harassment and do not therefore uphold those complaints. It is clear however that those complaints are not malicious."

On the second of those matters, namely the showing by you to [the complainant] of an academic which [the complainant] claims was inappropriate and offensive and which made her feel hurt and disgusted, the Report concludes as follows:

"The question for us is whether Dr. Evans's action can reasonably be regarded as sexually offensive, humiliating or intimidating to [the complainant]. We find the action was a joke with sexual innuendo and it was reasonable for [the complainant] to be offended by being presented with it in her office alone. We therefore find that the complaint on this action is upheld, although it was not Dr. Evans's intention to cause offence."

In these circumstances, I am surprised that you should now contend that the investigators have not upheld the complaint of sexual harassment. It is clear that the sexual harassment complaint in respect of the second matter was indeed upheld.

I cannot accept your contention that the manner in which [the complainant's] complaint was dealt with by the University was inappropriate. [The complainant] chose to make a formal complaint of sexual harassment against you. I am satisfied that it was appropriate for the University to deal with such a formal complaint under the Formal Procedure set out in the Duty of Respect and Right to Dignity Policy. I am satisfied that the Policy does not prevent any member of staff from making a formal complaint of sexual harassment should they choose to do so and I am further satisfied that the Policy does not require a complainant to attempt to resolve their concerns using informal means.

The investigators have upheld one of [the complainant's] complaints and have not upheld the other complaint. With reference to the complaint which was not upheld, the Report concludes that "it is clear, however, that these complaints are not malicious". I note that you challenge the finding that the complaint was not malicious. However, in circumstances where one allegation was upheld, I see no reason why I should not accept the investigators' conclusion that the complaint was not made maliciously.

As a complaint of sexual harassment against you has been upheld, it is now for me to decide whether to invoke the Disciplinary Procedures against you, as contemplated in paragraph 35 of the Policy, or to proceed in accordance with paragraph 36 of the Policy. In view of the finding in relation to the allegation that was upheld that "it was not [your] intention to cause offence", I have decided, in the particular circumstances of this case, not to invoke the University's Disciplinary Procedure as contemplated in paragraph 35 of the Policy but, instead, to invoke paragraph 36 of the Policy. Accordingly, I am requesting you to engage in training and counselling and to complete a period of monitoring and appraisal. Behaviour of this type is utterly unacceptable within the University and, should any further complaint of sexual harassment against you be upheld in the future, I will have no hesitation in invoking the University's Disciplinary Procedures.

The details of the training and counselling will be sent to you in due course.

With reference to the monitoring and appraisal, I believe that it is appropriate that your behaviour in this regard should be monitored and appraised over a two-year period, commencing on 1 April 2010. That monitoring/appraisal will be conducted by your Head of School and I propose to ask the Head of School to let me have a short report every six months during that time. Needless to say, I must strongly encourage you to behave in an appropriate manner and in strict compliance with the University's Duty of Respect and Right to Dignity Policy.

Yours sincerely,

Michael B. Murphy,
President.

by Demure Lemur Wed Oct 20, 2010 18:59 demurelemur at live dot co dot uk

Dylan Evans was not disciplined for showing an article on sex in fruit bats to a colleague in the context of a debate on human exceptionalism. That's just spin. Evans was disciplined because one complaint of sexual harrassment was upheld against him by an external investigation following a complaint by a female colleague.

You can read all the documentation here:
http://felidix.com/DylanEvans/

Can we all please agree that it's not about the bats?

I think Stephen Kinsella's post on the matter raises some good points.

http://www.stephenkinsella.net/2010/05/18/fruitbatgate/

Kinsella originally started the #fruitbatgate tag on twitter in support of Evans, but the above post decries Evans for publishing confidential documents that name Dr. Salerno Kennedy. (There is no concrete evidence that it was Evans who published this documentation, but he is currently under investigation for breech of confidentiality.) Kinsella, however, maintains his original conviction that Evans was treated harshly by UCC. I can't take this conviction particularly seriously, because Kinsella wasn't in the room when the upheld harrassment incident took place.

Supporting Evans's campaign comes down to taking his word against Salerno Kennedy's. She says he sexually harrassed her. He says he didn't. An external commission upheld one of the two complaints made. It notes that Evans did not intend to cause offence with his behaviour, and also that the complainant did not complain due to malicious intent. It's all online. Read it.

Was Evans harshly treated by UCC? It depends on whether or not he harrassed Dr. Salerno-Kennedy. Was Salerno-Kennedy sexually harrassed? I don't know - I can't know. I wasn't there.

What I do know is that it's a good thing that we're finally taking sexual harrassment complaints seriously in Ireland.

by Fembot Fri Oct 15, 2010 22:58

The recent revival of reports of Dylan Evans sexually harassing a colleague reveal both an amusing and a worrisome aspect of this case - amusing because Dylan Evans' relentless self-promotion was directly responsible for reviving the harassment issue, and worrisome because of his relentless cyber-presence.

The award of an IgNoble prize to the authors of the original paper on oral sex prolonging copulation in fruit bats (http://improbable.com/2010/10/14/fruit-bat-award-awaken...land/) would have passed largely unnoticed but for Evans crowing "IgNobel Award Ceremony vindicates #fruitbatgate lecturer by awarding prize to the paper on fruitbat fellatio http://bit.ly/adzXW1 at Harvard 3:41 AM Oct 1st via bitly" on Twitter. This rather unusual cock-crow (vindicates? howso?) resulted in two mistaken reports in the student rag that Evans himself had been awarded the IgNobel, later corrected (http://www.corkstudentnews.com/news/fruit-bat-lecturer-...14638 and http://www.corkstudentnews.com/hostedblogs/ig-nobel-pri...14640).

Of course twittering is just an aside to the big man's cyber omnipresence, starting with his homepage (http://www.dylan.org.uk/) adorned with tragic stories like "I feel like a victim of the Inquisition" (http://www.dylan.org.uk/inquisition.html) and a lengthy correspondence on the student noticeboard titled "Dr Dylan Evans and Politically Correct Zoology" (http://bb.ucc.ie/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=20108) that kicks off with a direct copy of the Huffington Post piece (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/sex-fruit-....html) instigated by Evans. Whilst Evans has denied uploading confidential documents about the complainant and her complaint to the web (he blames an unidentified "friend"), he is openly the creator of an Online Petition to "Stop UCC from abusing its harassment policy to limit academic freedom" (http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/freedebate/).

We might well wonder how the complainant feels about this invasion of her privacy (and I am wilfully ignoring the more despicable personal postings directed at her, and women in general). A quick review of his notable tweets (http://twitter.com/evansd66) includes the aforementioned "IgNobel Award Ceremony vindicates #fruitbatgate lecturer by awarding prize to the paper on fruitbat fellatio http://bit.ly/adzXW1 at Harvard" and "Irish Independent joins the dots http://bit.ly/beWCBs re: #fruitbatgate and igNobel", but also references to his position at University College Cork "New course at UCC offered by #fruitbatgate lecturer - http://bit.ly/9XD9uJ - available to all students" - clearly he values the notoriety of his fruitbatgate exploits. (Interestingly, in the Independent he complained that "I can live with the sanctions, but I cannot live with a factual finding of sexual harassment against me -- it has serious career implications for me." http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/notorious-f....html).

A more interesting diversion in his twitterings is his obvious dislike for "Daphne Patai's book on the "sexual harassment industry" http://amzn.to/ai1tsu shows #fruitbatgate is part of sinister trend". This points to the book "Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism" by Daphne Patai (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heterophobia-Sexual-Harassment-...89883). There is a telling customer review here by a certain L. Saxon who concludes that "As for sexual harrassment, we need to understand male and female sexuality and the perfectly rational fears women may have towards men and not get carried away with paranoia that a few extreme events are representative of the general reality. In this regard Patai is scraping the barrel and making mountains out of molehills."
L. Saxon (profile http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pdp/profile/A25NHSZRBHLE43) also happens to like "Sexual Conflict: Monographs in Behaviour and Ecology (Monographs in Behavior and Ecology)" by Goran Arnqvist, to dislike "Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality" by Christopher Ryan and to hate "Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Politics of Purity (American Intellectual Culture)" by Daphne Patai. There is some similarity to Orlando Figes in all this, as each review pursues the factual elements of Dylan Evans' own harassment verdict. Are there other pseudonyms for L. Saxon's mysogynistic attacks on feminist authors?

Of course no good academic would stop without consulting the infallible Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Evans) which has mysteriously just recognized that Dylan Evans is a sexual harasser (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dylan_Evans&a...story) although his reputation has been vehemently protected by the editor Nomoskedasticity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nomoskedasticity), a particularly aggressive editor with a history of Sock Puppetry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_inves...icity). Again, it is interesting that Evans' online protector, Nomoskedasticity, is also an online force pursuing interests almost identical to Evans' real life battles (http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/topedits/index.php?name...ace=0), to the extent that it looks almost like he/she is a cyber vendetta machine.

Which brings me back to my introduction - such things are amusing, in a limited context, but a real adult man with such cyber omnipresence is not funny.

by Ironic twist Fri Oct 15, 2010 07:22

BONUS: Two students at Dr. Evans’s university have conflated the news of the Ig Nobel Prize (which was awarded to the authors of the fruit bat paper) with the Evans controversy (in which Dr. Evans is accused of reading that paper, and of then showing it to a colleague). In the Cork Student News, one student wrote a column headlined “Fruit bat lecturer wins alternative science prize for ‘improbable’ research“. A fellow student wrote a column under the headline “‘IG Nobel’ prize won’t do Dylan Evans any favours“. Can you spot the holes in those two Cork Student News stories?

UPDATE TO THE BONUS: The Cork Student News eventually corrected both columns.

http://www.corkstudentnews.com/news/fruit-bat-lecturer-...14638
http://www.corkstudentnews.com/hostedblogs/ig-nobel-pri...14640

by Saxon Thu Oct 14, 2010 22:30

Dylan Evans was found guilty of sexually harassing a female colleague, alone in her room, and subjected to severe disciplinary sanctions, which continue. He was also investigated for publicising the confidential information about the complainant through the internet and denied this accusation, although he has continued an astoundingly active internet campaign in his own defence (http://www.google.ie/#q=%22dylan+evans%22+sexual+harassment).

However, UCC continues to capitalise, somewhat bizarrely, on the consequent publicity. Today they published the false headline that "Fruit bat lecturer wins alternative science prize for 'improbable' research" in the Cork Student News (and later corrected the fact that Dylan Evans merely referred to the research, rather than writing it).

Aren't they embarrassed for the university and concerned for female staff and students?

Dylan Evans, found guilty of sexual harassment

by Darwinian. Thu May 20, 2010 22:48

The English Anglican Church buried Charles Darwin in Westminister Abbey.

Westminster Abbey is the holy of holies for English Christianity.

Only the rarest are buried in Westminster Abbey.

Darwin lies at rest in the cradle of English Christianity:

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/cha...arwin

.

by Tomás Ó Dufaigh Tue May 18, 2010 20:32

Steady on here people. You've only heard one side of the story. Only someone who was there knows what happened. Meantime it is very clear that a process was in train, which would have vindicated Dr Evans if he is in the right - and it looks as if he may be, on the balance of publicly available evidence. By choosing to go public now, in the middle of the thing and without waiting for his own union to act for him as it has been doing, he has made his university a laughingstock and made fools out of those negotiating on his behalf. That still doesn't make it right if he has been treatly wrongly, but two wrongs don't make a right either.

by Bazooka Joe Tue May 18, 2010 05:15

The complaint by Dr Rossana Salerno-Kennedy can be found here

http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c2.jpg

Her and her husband, Professor Peter Kennedy are not commenting
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/woman-in-batsex....html

http://www.ucc.ie/en/DepartmentsCentresandUnits/Schoolo...nedy/

She if fourth from the left
http://www.ucc.ie/en/CollegesandDepartments/Medicineand...6.JPG

by southern comfort Mon May 17, 2010 20:35

Relax, it's just our catholic guilt trip about sex, that's all. We aren't having fun because we are uptight, and we're damned if some bat is going to have any - they even look like the devil, don't they, with their spikey ears.

Remember the people who told you about the Immaculate Conception? And told you about the long years waiting for a real Catholic University here? Do you think they really believed it all? All right, they probably did. It's probably an essential qualification for university managers.

by pat c Mon May 17, 2010 15:04

This issue has now been covered by the New Scientist. High-profile academics including philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and Steven Pinker of Harvard University have supported Dylan Evans.

Dennett calls the punishment "an outrageous violation of academic freedom" and Pinker says the "absurd and shameful" judgment "runs contrary to the principle of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech, to say nothing of common sense"...

The paper, published last year in PLoS One, was covered in New Scientist and many other outlets...

The Irish Federation of University Teachers has written to Murphy asking him to rescind the two-year period of monitoring. Murphy's office had not replied to an enquiry from New Scientist at the time of publication.

by observer Sun May 16, 2010 20:20

... are currently online at the site below.

Interesting how little interest Irish academics have shown in this matter one way or the other. The issue has been blogged in the Huffington Post, by Richard Dawkins and others, so it can't be a question of not knowing of its existence.