Oh, I definitely agree! Scientific illiteracy is rampant, and definitely not a good thing. But scientists being circle-jerking elitists is not cool and ignores much of what science is about.

I do have to say that I very much disagree with your second point, though. There's a lot of research that suggests girls are discouraged from STEM fields from a very young age, starting as early as elementary school. Being subtly discouraged for your whole life means that you're less likely to want to go into a particular field. This is unfortunate because it's possible that those people would have really enjoyed being in STEM and could have made fantastic discoveries, but were driven away in their formative years because they were socialized to believe that science is for boys. I have a very distinct memory of being told by an elementary school teacher that boys were better at math and that I should be a stay-at-home mom. I don't think it's much of a coincidence that after that, I barely paid attention in science and math classes until I was in high school. I had a fantastic (female) chemistry teacher and I discovered that I really, really loved science. When she noticed that I liked science, she encouraged me to apply for lab internships and eventually to research universities. I had multiple lab internships in high school with female PIs. Suddenly, being a woman in science didn't seem so weird! Science is my passion and I truly love what I do. I sometimes wonder where I would be if I didn't have such a fantastic string of female science role models in high school. It makes me sad to know that I am in a minority of women who had this experience.

Even putting that aside, though, what Tim Hunt said is still insane. It's not like he said that having a gender imbalance in science is fine. Although I disagree, people express this opinion all the time. What he said is that women "fall in love with you" and "cry when you criticize them" and should be completely separated from men in labs. What?! I don't know how many female grad students he's had in his lab, but I have a lot of female friends in science, none of whom have fallen in love with their PIs or cried in front of them.