The follow-up with "the very next day she wrote to me without the faintest hint of ambivalence, asking for additional feedback on her presentation" is also completely disingenuous. He's in a position of absolute power and SENS is writing her paychecks. If I had an argument with my wife and the next morning's text was "please pick up milk", that is not evidence that things are good between us.
Innocent until proven guilty is a trial standard. I doubt any of this will go to court, so we have to make up our minds based on what's available. He admits there's evidence he was hitting on a 17 year old and his rhetoric wouldn't convince me the sky is blue, on top of it being tone deaf. More women don't need to come forward and upheave their lives to try to bury this guy's career, he's digging his own grave.
Neither of the accusers allege anything terribly egregious. The premise of their post is that their experiences are part of a pattern, that there are many more victims and that some of de Grey's behavior goes beyond merely inappropriate.
The repsonse denies that pattern. It doesn't allege "brain-washing," just that the accusers have been misinformed. I would bet that his behavior is part of a pattern but it seems like a fine idea to wait and see.
"In order to orient you"? "Laura references an email I wrote - inadvisedly, for sure, and which I unreservedly regret - to her when she was 17"?
Even if this is the watered-down, best-light scenario, this is very weird.
And then tries to use Laura's words against her- she previously dismisses it as an honest mistake and then changes her mind when presented with apparent new evidence. And somehow portrays this as them being deceived.
Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers and are very likely to be unsuccessful in influencing Aubrey de Grey's career long term. If one wanted to smear Aubrey de Grey, she-said-he-said creepiness is one of the least effective ways to do it because a wide swath of the population aren't bothered enough to affect someone's career over it-- the only reason consequences are newsworthy is because they're so uncommon.
I think the law deals with similar concerns by not basing a judgement on how someone feels, but rather on actions and agreements. Did they lie, cheat, steal, deceive, coerce, manipulate, intimidate, threaten, abuse, etc in context of some agreement or lack thereof. But that's just the law; obviously there is an entire world of morality/ethics that exists outside the law with different considerations.
I'm just saying, he hit on a minor, and he doesn't appear to be a moron, so screw this guy.
Shouldn't be an issue. Like, if your act was so marginal that a friend saying "no seriously, that sounds like creeping to me" can tip the balance from okay to not okay, maybe you shouldn't be doing that.
From the look of the Twitter feed of one of the accusers, it doesn't look to be doing anything but promoting them and putting them up as brave, etc.
it's not impossible that people try to rise the temperature on old events shed in today's light
The person or people that would be tricking other people in this scenario into coming forward wouldn't necessarily have a career blown up, just the people they tricked.
I think the implication he's going for is "I had two, and just two somewhat sketchy interactions in the past, and neither were all that bad, and then those people were convinced there there were a lot more that happened they didn't know about, and so felt compelled to step forward with their experiences to help others, even though those additional experiences never happened."
On the one hand, I can see a possibility where that's possible, and this wasn't even premeditated to this extend, and it was just someone on the board badmouthing him and implying stuff, and it traveled between people and got out of hand, but on the other had, that seems pretty unlikely. You'd think someone willing to publicly speak about their experiences like this that might expect backlash would be more careful than to do so without making very sure to investigate a bit more, so the "it's really just you two and wasn't great, but not all that bad" defense isn't really a strong one, at least not if any other evidence comes forth. If none comes forth, that will be interesting (but at the same time we'll all have moved on and will likely associate Aubrey de Grey with this even if he's later somewhat vindicated in some way).