I’m very proud to have been a professor at UCL and I met some wonderful people during my time there: students, academics, and support staff. When one reads the history of the place in Harte and North’s The World of University College London 1828-1978 [1] (the book has subsequently been updated), feelings are not just of pride, but also of humility, as so many great academics have graced the college.
One of the pleasures of working at UCL was being able to pursue my interests in both research and teaching, but that also brought a downside, for I was the only person in my department working in Aquatic Biology and I was very grateful for the collaborations that I developed elsewhere in the UK, in Sweden and in the USA. In the end, I realised that my time would best be spent on scholarship, as well as in practical research, and I wrote several reviews that cut across disciplines and sub-disciplines. This was good for me and, I hope, for those wanting to break down barriers in Aquatic Biology, and I am so grateful that I was allowed to do this unhindered. That work certainly enhanced, and informed, my teaching.
During my time at UCL, changes in higher education were occurring and the pressure to obtain research grants, high fee-paying overseas students, etc. were uppermost. Universities were being run more and more on business lines and, at UCL, there was a heavy stress on Medicine and Biomedicine, as these were areas where funding was generous for many projects. UCL attracted many very able researchers in these disciplines.
It was in the field of biomedical research where I feel a bit confused and disappointed by the senior administrators at UCL and that takes me on to the title of “The Tale of Tim and David”. Tim is Sir Tim Hunt (a Nobel Laureate) and David is Professor David Latchman, now Master of Birkbeck, University of London and described on his website [2] as “a leading UK university academic, author, and philanthropist”. Let me begin by referring to two pieces in The Guardian online.
These are selected comments from an article in 2015 about Sir Tim, after he made a silly remark at a conference [3]:
As jokes go, Sir Tim Hunt’s brief standup routine about women in science last week must rank as one of the worst acts of academic self-harm in history.
“I stood up and went mad,” he admits. “I was very nervous and a bit confused but, yes, I made those remarks – which were inexcusable – but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way. There was some polite applause and that was it, I thought. I thought everything was OK. No one accused me of being a sexist pig.”
Collins [Professor Mary Collins, wife of Sir Tim and an eminent professor at UCL, Sir Tim being an honorary researcher there] was called by University College London. “I was told by a senior that Tim had to resign immediately or be sacked – though I was told it would be treated as a low-key affair. Tim duly emailed his resignation when he got home. The university promptly announced his resignation on its website and started tweeting that they had got rid of him. Essentially they had hung both of us out to dry.. .. What they did was unacceptable.”
This is what was written in 2020 about David [4]:
David Latchman, professor of genetics at University College London.. ..has angered senior academics by presiding over a laboratory that published fraudulent research, mostly on genetics and heart disease, for more than a decade. The number of fabricated results and the length of time over which the deception took place made the case one of the worst instances of research fraud uncovered in a British university.
..two investigations at UCL.. .. were deeply critical of Latchman. Both found that his failure to run the lab properly, and his position as author on many of the doctored papers, amounted to “recklessness”, and upheld an allegation of research misconduct against him.
Latchman no longer has a lab and has stopped supervising research, but he is still a part-time professor of human genetics at UCL, and master of Birkbeck.
I have little more information than these two newspaper stories and I am not in a position to make judgement, nor would I wish to, as I do not have access to the details. However, I am struck by the difference in the “transgressions” made by the two eminent scientists: one made a silly comment and the other (apparently unknowingly) allowed the falsification of results in research. While Sir Tim was cast out, David was allowed to continue in his post. Why? Was it something to do with the philanthropy mentioned at the head of David’s website? Did money, and lawyers, talk? All this happened after I left UCL in 2012, but it leaves a bad taste and I reflect on the tolerance, integrity and collegiality of the college that I once knew well.
[I’ve never met Sir Tim Hunt, but I have met David Latchman on a few occasions and found him pleasant, and informed, company. Professor Mary Collins was my Dean at the end of my career at UCL.]
[1] Negley Harte and John North (1979) The World of University College London 1828-1978. Portsmouth, Eyre & Spottiswoode
[2] https://davidlatchman.net/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hung-out-to-dry-interview-mary-collins
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