“UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality,” the university said in a statement.

I guess they weren’t moved by his apology either.

Hunt’s comment is just one in a recent string of highly publicized instances of sexism in the sciences. Add it to the pile along with the column in Science that advised a woman to “put up with” her advisor looking down her shirt, and the peer-reviewer for PLOS One who suggested two female researchers find a male co-author for their paper.

The thing is, all these examples are pretty egregious, and all were later walked back in some way. Hunt resigned, Science apologized and removed the column, and PLOS One removed the offending reviewer. It would be easy to think that once such blatant offenses are punished, the dragon is slain, so to speak. It would be easy to think these people are outliers.

In so thinking, “we miss the bigger problem and tend to want to scapegoat,” says Heather Metcalf, the director of research and analysis for the Association for Women in Science. Instances like this are part of a bigger systemic problem—“really entrenched biases against women in the sciences that have shifted over time but are still very present,” she says.

In other words, it would be a mistake to listen to the foghorn of Hunt’s comments and ignore the boat it’s signaling.

Women in science, as in so many other fields, are paid significantly less than men on average. In 2008, the median salary for a full-time female scientist or engineer was $24,000 less than for a man. The Scientist’s 2014 Life Sciences Salary Survey found a pay gap that widened with every subsequent science degree earned—from bachelor’s, to master’s, to doctorate.

Average Compensation for U.S. Life Science Professionals, by Gender

From The Scientist, "2014 Life Sciences Salary Survey," November 2014, with permission.

While making less money, women scientists also often face harassment. A survey from 2014 found that 70 percent of women scientists had faced sexual harassment while working in the field, and 26 percent had experienced sexual assault. In another study, professors hiring for a lab-manager job judged men to be more competent than women with the same qualifications, and offered them higher salaries.

These are just a handful of the studies showing objective evidence of this gender bias, and while you would think that in the realm of science, data would be the thing to convince people, that doesn’t always seem to be the case. A study analyzing the comments left on articles about evidence of sexism in science found that 9.5 percent of comments argued it didn’t exist. Some commenters, mostly men, offered justifications for sexist behavior, and many of those arguments were rooted in biology.