this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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#justwomeninstemthings (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/23/sexism-in-science-did-watson-and-crick-really-steal-rosalind-franklins-data

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's something delightful about the meme not even getting her name right.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Frankie Rosato, yeah I knew him, he was a famous crystallographer and a Mafia boss

[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago

Please don't belittle Francis Crick by limiting his legacy to the theft of Rosalind Franklin's data and scientific advances. The guy was also a mysoginist, a racist, a eugenist and a sexual harasser. A true polymath 🫡

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The linked article has some top notch mental gymnastics. It goes through great pains to claim that Watson and Crick didn’t steal Franklins’s data (but were extremely cavalier about using it without telling her) and that they would’ve taken anyone’s data, not just a woman’s (although the data had to be brought to their attention because Watson didn’t take any notes on her lecture and instead only paid attention to her appearance).

I don’t know what drives people to make unfounded assertions defending the legacy of male scientists even while going through such lengths to describe the sexism female scientists faced. It’s like they want to imagine sexism was just something in the air that happened to affect women and not caused or perpetuated by anyone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

First one I grabbed, figures. Only skimmed it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I did not read it but its funny if they did. This has been known and talked about for 30 years or more so it would be a bit hard to get this genie back in the bottle.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Thank fuck I was born in this era. I would totally be popping Qualudes in the 1950s dealing with this bs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Didn’t she die before the Nobel was attributed cause she refused to wear lead vests?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Her death (whatever its cause) was the technical reason that she was not awarded it, but also they called her all sorts of horrid names including bitch. And to some extent it wasn't even them but her boss that handed them her data... but again the name-calling behaviors and such reveal how they were totally fine with that arrangement. i.e., it wasn't "just" the Nobel prize that they screwed her out of, it was all credit for it everywhere.

So it is one of those middling-IQ, low-EQ situations, as compared to e.g.:

img

img

img

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oooohhh! "Bitch." Wow. Truly the most vicious of insults.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Also if you knew anything about their personalities... well let's just say that I can understand why she might have even chosen to be bitchy around them:-P. I am saying: they were massive douches:-P.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Puts hair on your chest.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Then you might actually get credited with discoveries.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The 1st myth is that watson and crick figured out the solved the double helix by themselves. The 2nd myth is that they stole Rosalind Franklin's work and screwed her over. Both are misconceptions propagated by pop culture and Watson's own embellishments...

Franklin was a great crystallographer who contributed many key insights into the characteristics of the double helix. There were many brilliant scientists working on this problem at the time pushing technology to their limits to gain every piece of information we could about DNA's structure.

Franklin was a big name in her own right, and to say that Watson and Crick could figure out the double helix by stealing picture 51, whereas Franklin could not, implies that she couldn't figure out her own data, and is frankly insulting to her intellect.

This article explains it much better than I ever could: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Long but great read, thanks