IT’S 7 p.m. on a Friday night, and I’m still in the lab. Earlier in the day, as I was looking through old data, I unexpectedly found the answer to a question that I’d been trying to address for a year. It was one of those rare “eureka” moments in science. But it’s not as though in an instant a spotlight fell on the pictures of cells I’d been staring at, clearing up all mystery.

No, this is the beginning of a new mystery, and I have to repeat months worth of experiments. The other postdoctoral fellow in our group is also here late, the lights over our work area the only ones illuminating the floor. He offers to share his data and some research tools; I gratefully accept.



Would the Nobel laureate Tim Hunt argue that this scene is likely to be charged with sexual tension? After all, I am female, and Dr. Hunt, a biochemist, said at a conference earlier this month that his “trouble with girls” in laboratories is that “you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.” Certainly, then, he must have feared the possibility that two scientists might find themselves alone late one evening, with the aphrodisiacal power of scientific revelation unloosing their inhibitions.

Actually, I doubt Dr. Hunt is concerned about romantic entanglement between lowly post-docs. His “trouble with girls” was more likely rooted in his experience as a principal investigator, the head of an independent laboratory. He was swiftly censured for his remarks, and forced to resign from an honorary professor post and from several high-profile committees, which indicates how seriously institutions take the problem of gender bias. Still, women remain underrepresented in the top levels of bioscience despite greater gender parity at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I believe Dr. Hunt’s statements give us a clue as to one reason the pipeline leaks.