Hm. Can I ask what you mean by 'they should not hold social weight until anything is decided.'?
It seems like a bit of a contradiction when you're saying that the accusations should not be dismissed but at the same time, they should not hold social weight. Sure, there are no official testimonies but that the NYT reported the experiences of these women (in considerable detail) with their names is testimonial enough to validate the accusation of sexual misconduct and hence hold enough social weight, no? To prove and confirm usually involves lengthy legal procedures and in some cases is just not possible which is why this kind of behaviour was something that was 'easy to get away with'. Sure, in this case it'd help if we could hear directly from the 5 women themselves - through a video interview, a more personal account, etc. But how difficult must those things be to do? Anyway, I don't mean to make it about the accusation itself.
I agree that it's important to move beyond the outrage and accusation, and create a space to have real dialogue. #metoo has brought to light the extent to which harassment exists in the workplace and now it's time to see how to tackle it. And it has to move beyond condemnations, denouncements and retractions of titles, Oscars, Grammys or Pritzkers.
How, you ask me? I don't know. I'll think about it and come back :)
For me, an accusation is a piece of evidence. More accusations can verify mounting evidence that will then inform a better formal judgement. But when an accusation becomes an actual judgement itself, then we have something very problematic. Modern tech is allowing the separation of the two to become increasingly nondistinct.
Let's weigh what has happened so far in terms of real evidence and the outcome. On one hand, Meier has been accused by 5 (and I expect more to follow) individuals of behavior that is deplorable but not illegal in their own right. He has paid fines/administrative consequences and there will likely be more.
On the other, he's already "lost" his job, been slandered in popular media, had petitions written against him, had his professional prizes removed, had his donations to his alma mater refused, and to top it all off, has had the allegations "officialized" on platforms that we perceive as reservoirs of fact. Wikipedia is Encyclopedia Brittanica to most people and now, to most people, Meier is already a perpetrator in the eyes of the public. Even if everything is reversed and found to be complete false, the damage is already done.
I'm not sure what we can do to combat this type of social wildfire and consequence in this day and age since humans are gossipy creatures and things like Twitter just exacerbate nonsense hearsay, but I want to at least point out the major issue here.
Thanks for the comment @manouche!