He was honestly trying to be comforting

Thesis adviser: "You can't survive in science unless you have thick skin. It's actually worse than in politics, because in politics your friends will stick up for you, even if you are a jerk."

Followed by something along the lines of "in science your friends are supposed to be your harshest critics because they're supposed to help you succeed by giving you their honest opinion &c &c".

...is it so egregious to want friends whom I can depend on for both honesty and moral support? I did not ask this out loud, because it sounds like the sort of thing that will prompt an "if you are a REAL scientist" sort of rant.

And of course, if you're not REALLY serious about Science, that makes you a Bad Scientist.

I miss the days when being a bad scientist meant someone doing bad science (i.e. producing sloppy unreproducible results / running badly designed experiments / fail to ask the right scientific questions).

“I Mean, Is Sexism Really Still A Problem In 2012?”

Shortened from an article here:

Many of the women expressed discouragement at how many comments they have received that, while seemingly complimentary, somehow still felt wrong. These comments may have focused on appearance rather than content, or called attention to the relative lack of women in science. They can cause a feeling of unease, particularly when [the woman] is in the position of trying to draw attention towards her work rather than towards personal qualities like her gender or her appearance.

This phenomenon as benevolent sexism, which is a subjectively positive orientation of protection, idealization, and affection directed toward women that, like hostile sexism, serves to justify women’s subordinate status to men (Glick et al., 2000, p. 763) For women in male-dominated fields, or those who simply want to be seen as strong – it creates a damaging stereotype. It is a significant predictor of nationwide gender inequality, independent of the effects of hostile sexism.

When the women read statements illustrating benevolent sexism, they were less willing to engage in anti-sexist collective action, more likely to think that there are many advantages to being a woman, and more likely to engage in system justification, a process by which people justify the status quo and believe that there are no longer problems facing disadvantaged groups (such as women) in modern day society. 

In my experience the people who do this are doing this subconsciously, with zero malicious intent. It's almost charming how they seem to think calling attention to a scientist's femininity is a compliment. Almost.

To be fair, I don't really feel that strongly about it either. It's mild irritating and tends to be drowned out in the tsunami of frustration that I encounter on a daily bases from other quarters.  

Taken from How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival:

The iconoclastic Irish physicist John S. Bell had long nursed a private disquietude with quantum mechanics.The "ask no questions" attitude frustrated Bell, who remained unconvinced that Niels Bohr had really vanquished the last of Einstein's critiques long ago and that there was nothing left to worry about. At one point in his undergraduate studies, his red shock of hair blazing, he even engaged in a shouting match with a beleaguered professor, calling him "dishonest" for trying to paper over genuine mysteries in the foundations, such as how to interpret the uncertainty principle. 

...guess this is what they meant by "colourful". 

The publication of a paper denying the link between HIV and AIDS in an Italian anatomy journal has prompted a member of its editorial board to resign in protest. ...
The paper’s lead author, Peter Duesberg of the University of California, Berkeley, is well known for denying the link between HIV and AIDS, and six of the paper's nine authors, including Duesberg, are on the board of Rethinking AIDS, a voluntary group campaigning for “scientific reappraisal of the HIV–AIDS hypothesis”.
The paper is a reworked version of one published in the journal Medical Hypotheses in 2009, which at that time did not use peer review. Following a storm of protest, publisher Elsevier sent the paper to five external reviewers, and it was unanimously rejected. Elsevier permanently withdrew the paper on grounds of quality and concern for public heath²....

Article from http://www.nature.com/news/paper-denying-hiv-aids-link-sparks-resignation-1.9926.

I realized that those not in the field of research may not be as familiar with this, but as my professors like to tell me, just because it's published, doesn't mean it's true. You have to pay attention to both where it's published, because not all publications are equally trustworthy, especially in this age of internet, and you also have to pay attention to the actual data, because believe it or not, even for journals like Nature and Science, the retraction rate is fairly high (especially since the name-brand journals tend to publish on what research is "hot" and not necessarily on what's the most robust).