[zozbot234]

The controversial part is where he suggests that this is a "problem" and might be a good reason to exclude women from working in the lab alongside with males. That looks like he's starting out with a very sexist attitude and trying to justify it with flimsy excuses.

[anewhnaccount2]

That part was the joke. He's saying it's a real problem, but that's clearly the wrong solution. For him, it's obviously a bad solution, and so worthy of ridicule.

[wrs]

By framing that as “exclusion” are you assuming the women-only labs would be worse places to work than the men-only labs?

[b3morales]

As a policy it denies both women and men the opportunity of working together. If you are a man and a woman happens to be working on the same problem that you are investigating, would you like to be excluded from learning from her? And vice versa.

[wrs]

Exactly. So his proposal is not a practical solution to the problem of human behavior affecting productivity, but it’s not “sexist”. Many single-sex schools exist and have strong proponents, but are rarely described as “excluding” people.