This week, Professor Tim Hunt shocked the scientific community, and pretty much everyone else, with his outrageous comments about his “trouble with girls” and his backwards endorsement of gender-segregated laboratories, which are apparently needed because women are impossibly attracted to him. Understandably, commenters have slammed both his sexist comments and his apology. But the most important people in the story have been drowned out: the women scientists who are living proof of just how wrong Hunt is.

The field Hunt partly created, as well as his own scientific career, have both flourished due to his intellectual collaborations with women, as well as countless other academic partnerships between men and women, notably in the lab of Sir Paul Nurse. Tracing Hunt’s own history, his outburst seems even more astounding.

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Hunt’s key breakthrough about the cell cycle, the discovery cyclins, centred on his experiments with sea urchins and clams in the Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole. It was here that he worked extensively with Joan Ruderman, a period he later said “opened up new horizons, not only in learning to deal with new systems, but in the breadth of approaches and interests of scientists who passed through Woods Hole”. In his Nobel lecture, Hunt lauded the simple, but brilliant, experiments of Ruderman and Katherine Swenson, who were the first to show that cyclins bring about cell division. He described their experiments as “electrifying”, saying the women produced a “spectacular result” that “made people sit up and take note”. Admittedly, there are shamefully few women in Hunt’s personal “cell cycle story”, but he clearly respects their scientific insights and has directly benefitted from their input, making it extremely hard to understand why he thinks working with women is a waste of his time.

Tim Hunt shared that prestigious stage in Stockholm with Sir Paul Nurse, and they both could not have claimed place on that platform without the tireless efforts of women colleagues. As a member of Nurse’s lab, Melanie Lee proved that his work in yeast was applicable to humans, a revelation that captured the attention of the medical community. Nurse described it as “a major step forward, all the more so because she persevered with a project that many argued was highly unlikely to succeed”. Writing in the journal Cell, Professor Kim Nasmyth, FRS, praised Lee’s contribution as a “tour de force” that had “an immediate and electrifying impact”.

It’s no surprise that the Royal Society, headed by Nurse, so rapidly denounced Hunt’s sexist ramblings: their own figurehead’s career was launched into the stratosphere by a woman, and he enjoyed excellent working relationships with several women. Nurse’s first graduate student, Jacky Hayles, had been working in his laboratory for twenty years by the time he received his Nobel Prize. Nurse credited her numerous contributions to his science in his Nobel lecture, as well as the seminal work of Kathy Gould, who helped define the regulatory events triggering cell division.

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Hunt calls women scientists “girls”, as though they are immature, and incapable of forwarding academia in any serious way. He suggests they disturb serious, hard-working men in their scientific pursuit. Yet Hunt knows women who have bolstered to his own success. He is obviously aware of the ground-breaking research women are doing in science; he is certainly more aware than any member of the public, and many of those criticising him. Is it that only some women are distractions, or maybe he thinks he would have won several Nobel Prizes if there were no women around?

It is obvious that his comments were sexist, but few people could recognise the names or faces of the women he has so thoughtlessly brushed aside. Even in his inadequate apology, he neglected to mention any women scientists who have impressed him during his career, choosing instead to justify himself with unsolicited details about his love life. Many have railed against Hunt’s casual chauvinism, without questioning why positive remarks about women are still missing. Would such comments be irrelevant? Unless we acknowledge the stories of women he has forgotten, a negative portrayal of women once again takes centre stage.

This is the mentality that breeds sexism in science, and indeed, everywhere. Hunt has become a symbol of a widespread problem; criticising him may galvanise feminists, but unless we project positive attitudes about women, sexism will remain the status quo. At the moment, stock pictures of teenagers holding test tubes, or maybe a picture of Rosalind Franklin, are our best representations of “women in science”. Women are either anonymous, or have only made headlines because they were ignored. This, of course, has to change, and not just in science.

In male-dominated fields, these changes will require leadership from both men as well as women. Men must help to empower their female colleagues, especially when the world is watching. This is perhaps the most depressing part of Hunt’s public downfall. He is in a unique position to call for progress on social attitudes in science, but has proved completely incapable of doing so.

You can follow Helen on Twitter: @HelCahill