The West, having undergone its own Cultural Revolution, has taken up the baton of Maoist self-criticism.

I refer to the forced resignation of Professor Timothy Hunt from University College London. Hunt was the discoverer of a type of chemical important in cell division, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001. And that discovery was far from being his only contribution to science.

What was the terrible wrongdoing that brought about his ignominious fall? He made a few remarks while in South Korea to the effect that relations between the sexes in scientific laboratories are often complicated, that women scientists when criticized often burst into tears, and that unisex laboratories are therefore a good idea. These remarks were intended lightly, no doubt ironically, but such is the modern thirst for moral or political outrage, which is the tool of the mediocre to bring about their revenge upon the gifted, that words are now taken in the most literal sense and given thereby the worst possible interpretation. The mediocre wait to take offense as a spider awaits its prey in a web; the spider needs its prey to live, the mediocre their offendedness to feel a sense of purpose to their lives.