Connie St Louis, the Fraud Who Took Down a Great Scientist

01 Jul, 2015 by Dave Blount

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The tale of Nobel laureate biologist Tim Hunt’s downfall illustrates how frightening it can be to live during the Reign of Politically Correct Terror:

On Monday, June 8, a British academic called Connie St Louis uploaded a sensational document to her Twitter feed. Beginning with the question ‘Why are the British so embarrassing abroad?’, it offered an account of bizarre remarks that a Nobel Prize-winning biologist by the name of Sir Tim Hunt had made earlier that day at a conference in Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

His audience was comprised of roughly 100 science journalists, most of them female, who were being treated to a free lunch by a local trade body representing Women’s Science & Technology Associations.

According to St Louis, who was in the crowd, their meal was ‘utterly ruined’ by the ‘sexist speaker’. She claimed that Sir Tim, having been asked to deliver a toast, embarked on a surreal rant in which he boasted of being a ‘male chauvinist’. …

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‘Really, does this Nobel laureate think we are still in Victorian times?’ she asked.

If only.

So began an extraordinary course of events that saw her tweet shared more than 600 times, kick-starting a viral scandal which resulted in the 72-year-old academic, famed for his pioneering work on cell division, being vilified across social media. …

Within hours, Sir Tim was being hauled across the coals in newspapers and TV bulletins across the world.

In no time his career was utterly destroyed.

The days that followed saw him unceremoniously hounded out of honorary positions at University College London (UCL), the Royal Society and the European Research Council (ERC).

Then came the revelation that Hunt was just making an innocuous joke, which the obtuse St Louis had failed to comprehend.

It came courtesy of The Times newspaper, which revealed the contents of a leaked report into Sir Tim’s fall from grace compiled by an EU official who had accompanied him to the Seoul conference.

This individual, who has not been named, sat with him at the lunch and provided a transcript of what Sir Tim ‘really said’.

This transcript vindicates him of the charge of being a sexist thought criminal.

But St Louis is sticking by her story:

As a result, this explosive controversy now rests on a single, straightforward question: which of these two, first-hand versions of events is true? Either the anonymous EU official is telling the truth, in which case Sir Tim is a hapless victim, guilty of nothing more than telling a misjudged joke. Or Connie St Louis, the architect of the witch-hunt against him, is in the right. In that case, [vindictive intolerant liberals who insist on absolute ideological conformity] will continue to argue that he got what he deserved.

St Louis has gotten only two people to back up her story.

Strangely, given that there were more than 90 other journalists present at the fateful lunch in Seoul, no other detailed accounts of the toast have emerged.

Rather than make assumptions from that based on the overwhelming left-wing bias of the media, let’s figure out who is more credible — a great scientist or Connie St Louis:

A good place to start is the website of London’s City University, where St Louis has, for more than a decade, been employed to run a postgraduate course in science journalism.

Here, on a page outlining her CV, she is described as follows:

‘Connie St Louis . . . is an award-winning freelance broadcaster, journalist, writer and scientist.

‘She presents and produces a range of programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service . . . She writes for numerous outlets, including The Independent, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, BBC On Air magazine and BBC Online.’

All very prestigious. Comforting, no doubt, for potential students considering whether to devote a year of their lives (and money) to completing an MA course under her stewardship. Except, that is for one small detail: almost all of these supposed ‘facts’ appear to be untrue.

That her curriculum vitae consists mainly of lies is documented in detail by the Daily Mail. An accurate CV accounting for her professional success would consist of only a few words: “Connie St Louis is a woman of color who spouts moonbattery.”

Nonetheless it is doubtful that Hunt’s career will be restored. Once you have been branded a thought criminal, getting your career back is almost as hard as it was to get your head back after a trip to the guillotine during the original Reign of Terror.

But some good has come of this. Connie St Louis finally has a legitimate accomplishment to put on her CV. She made the Hate Hoax List at Moonbattery.com:

• Connie St Louis
• Rachel Dolezal
• Tahera Ahmad
• Phony University of Minnesota rape victim
• Sarah Silverman
• Kassim Alhimidi
• George Washington University swastika
• Adam Hoover
• Ambreen Sharif
• Charles Blow
• Morgan Triplett
• Desiree Nall
• Mindy Brickman
• Oberlin College
• Lena Dunham
• Rolling Stone/Jackie
• University of Chicago Facebook hoax
• Adam Saleh and Sheikh Akbar
• Daniele Watts
• Keith Jones
• Sweet Briar College hoaxer
• Grand Valley State University student
• Richard Kennedy
• Anonymous Hercules Middle-High School student
• Joe Williams
• Andrea Brazier
• Genesis Hernandez
• Danya Morales
• Toni Christina Jenkins
• Dylan Bleier and Matt Alden
• Meg Lanker-Simons
• Olander Cuthrell
• Charlie Rogers
• Sharmeka Moffitt
• Joseph Baken
• Alexandra Pennell
• Aimee Whitchurch and Christel Conklin
• Quinn Matney
• Aubriana Banks
• Sarah Marshak
• Floyd Elliot
• Tawana Brawley
• Crystal Gail Mangum
• Kerri Dunn
• Leah Miller
• Ahmad Saad Nasim