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Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

tropo 8y ago
Do you think a man in a similar position would be elevated on a pedestal, to the exclusion of the algorithm designer (Mareki Honma) and the primary software author (Andrew Chael)?
- streb-lo 8y ago
  Yes I think the world would be interested to meet the person behind viewing the first black hole regardless of their gender. >to the exclusion of the algorithm designer and the primary software author? How can you possibly infer that from a git history?
- inflatableDodo 8y ago
  Who gets elevated on a pedestal and who actually did the work appear to be so badly correlated across the entire breadth of human cultures that you would assume that they only share the most tenuous of causal linkages. So yes, that happens a lot.
adventured 8y ago
I think people get consistently annoyed when blanket credit is given to eg Elon Musk regarding SpaceX (as though he's an aerospace god that did it all by himself), and when far too much credit was given to Steve Jobs regarding the iPhone. SpaceX is a case where Gwynne Shotwell deserves a chunk of the credit that is typically thrown at Musk by the media (because his stardom sells). It's not that they don't deserve their fair share of credit, to be clear. It's that they do not deserve the level of overwhelming credit the media intentionally tries to bestow upon them, to create an idol that sells / generates clicks. You pretty well see it in every thread regarding those two people. The hype train tries to give them credit, whether the media or fans, and other people get annoyed by it and call it out because it's obviously ridiculous to so overly credit such vast accomplishments requiring thousands of contributors to a given individual.
ikeyany 8y ago
Absolutely not. That said, if Katie was a man, her story would not be as groundbreaking in a social context, and thus she would not be as celebrated.
- Not_a_pizza 8y ago
  It's an asinine premise to say that the sex or race of a person makes an accomplishment more or less praiseworthy. If you really believe all are created equal, then you should be willing to praise equally for the same accomplishment regardless. If you don't, then what you are stating is that a sex or race is normally quite incompetent at such things and that it had to be a greater effort. Individuals do have different circumstances to overcome to reach success, but you won't measure that simply by stating that someone is woman, so she's had things hard. (Edit) It would be totally ridiculous in nearly any society to say that the richest women in society are as disadvantaged as the poorest of men, so we can say that typical SJW habits are totally insignificant at leveling any real playing field. Some women feel threatened by their societies. Then there are some societies that feel threatened by their women. Putting women on some pedestal because you feel they can't normally do something, frankly is insulting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih
  - themarkn 8y ago
    Social, historical, and cultural factors undoubtedly make the level of effort required to be successful as a woman in tech or science spaces higher than the level of effort a man has to make for the same level of success (if you could control everything else). This can be true without any derogatory implication about the inherent capabilities of women generally. That you can't tell the difference astonishes me.
    - rjf72 8y ago
      What do you base your first sentence on? Unsurprisingly there is now research indicating that female candidates are now twice as likely to be chosen as equally qualified men for tenure track positions in university science departments. [1] And I'm sure my computer science class was no exception in that the generally ~three females in the class had about 90% of the rest of the class willing to do any and everything they possible could to help them, mostly being happy to just be able to spend time around a woman interested in CS. I have an inside track there as one of those three is now my wife! I don't understand how people can think it would be harder to achieve as a female in STEM in the current environment (and neither does my wife for that matter). You get jobs easier, you get tenure tracks easier, you have enormous support networks, and so on. 30 years ago I'd agree with you, but I think we've long since radically overcorrected and, as you would say, that somebody can't see this does genuinely astonish me. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/1...
kaitai 8y ago
Also, this is a few articles and a Facebook meme. There's no Nobel prize or anything. Why begrudge someone their 15 minutes of science fame for leading a cool effort, making cool science happen?
- frontloadpro 8y ago
  Because we relate to this situation? The team does work, but someone else gets the credit. I sympathize.
jealous_guy 8y ago
No, but if it was an "unlikely man"... I work with Computer Engineers and Scientists, and I know what is an "unlikely" person. That's a really handsome soft-spoken guy, wearing a shirt and clean shaven. That guy tries to sell you software but you know he has no bloody clue what he's talking about. If it was some "unlikely minority" - for instance Asian person regardless of gender would not be checked, while some other groups might be seen with more suspicion. You can see this as a security check. Yes, it's prejudice - but, in a way, it's a good kind. We aren't saying "she couldn't have done it because she's a girl", all we're saying "based on our life experiences - person of that age, gender and demographics is unlikely to have played the most important role in such a project". Now we try to check our suspicion, if it's proven to be wrong, and indeed she was the most prolific contributor - then next time similar person would get an award we would be less suspicious! All about life-experience!
hnaccy 8y ago
I mean if she was a man I doubt two members of congress would've have bothered to comment or that there'd be article after article focusing on them specifically.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
On the one hand, no, not in a public setting. On the other hand, looking at git histories is basically how the social parts of engineering (e.g., money and power) at a place like Google works, at its fundamental level. This has persisted for a very, very long time. I still remember when people would comment things like, "I worked with so-and-so unorthodox former Google employee, and he didn't commit code." There are a lot of Googlers on HN. There are a lot of people who work at places that culturally align themselves with how that company runs. It probably has something to do with why some women feel underpaid or unwelcome at these places. It definitely has something to do with people commenting things like, "So is this the case of the product manager taking credit..." The tension between the product manager who "didn't do anything" and the engineer who "did all the work" and how the "org" sees that and measures "performance" are all swimming in the back of HN people's heads when they snipe some random academic. Settling the score in a way so reductive is extremely appealing. But at least in duels, the other person gets to fire back.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  But why would she be assumed to be the product manager (or its equivalent in the academic realm)? She has a doctorate in Computer Science from MIT, so she clearly has the technical chops. And she's in the early stages of her academic career, so she hasn't reached the point where she would have the ability to claim grad students' work as her own (which would also be a huge ethical lapse, though apparently it does happen [often with women as the victims]). In my experience, people don't start looking into these things without some other suspicion. In a work setting, that would be things like impressions of poor productivity, claimed output not matching perceptions of competency, etc. But those involve a ton of data points, based on direct interactions with the person. In this case, the article gives us the following demographic data points: - 29 years old - Woman - Computer Science doctorate from MIT - Assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology Which of those data points suggests that her work output should be questioned?
papermill 8y ago
The answer is an obvious yes. Especially on HN where supposedly we are a technology related site. I suspect the first thing most of us do is to google or ddg github and the computer scientist's name ( male or female ). The better question is if Katie was a man, would BBC or the media single him out for this level of attention. If Katie was a man would the media be trying to make him the face of this scientific enterprise. If Katie was a man, would that story be pushed to the top of HN and be heavily censored to push a particular narrative.
monksy 8y ago
Outside of the serious tech community, no one knows who Linus Torvald is. They do know that Linux exists. Well, I take part of that back. He did have some personal pieces about "he's the guy that's a bully of the project" (when he took a personal hiatus from the project)
newswriter99 8y ago
If Katie was a man, no one would care about her.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Bullshit, this discovery was front page news worldwide. It's ridiculous on its face to assert that recognition isn't given to male scientists, given how many famous male scientists there are.
  - newswriter99 8y ago
    Do you think that "random male scientist #237" would be getting as much news coverage, photo-ops and retweets by "YAAS QUEEN SLAY" females as Katie?
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      Why are you so bent out of shape by this?
      - newswriter99 8y ago
        Is that you're rebuttal? Attacking my character?
- mgfist 8y ago
  Just like all the male scientists in history. I bet you haven't heard of Einstein either then right?
  - Kaiyou 8y ago
    Can you namedrop a male scientist that did something in 2019?
    - mgfist 7y ago
      Missing the point that this is the first picture of a freaking black hole..
anonytrary 8y ago
People are already doing this on Reddit[0][1], and it's pretty silly because they obviously have no idea how Github or scientific research works. There's an effort underway to undermine Katie Bouman's contributions and it's absolutely ridiculous. Edit: I just checked Twitter, apparently there are thousands of idiots who believe this "850,000/900,000 lines written by Andrew, therefore he wrote the algorithm" narrative. It's amazing how willing people are to eat up a low-hanging narrative as long as it confirms their world-view. All it takes is a very crude understanding of how software development works to see through this narrative. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/bbykvf/katie_bouman_should_not_be_getting_credit_for_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/bbykvf/ka... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbuvff/this_is_andrew_chael_he_wrote_850000_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbuvff/this_is_andrew...
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  This[0] comment seems to be another in that vein, though it seems to have more details, even if it repeats the 850k lines stat which doesn't really hold up. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbql1i/this_is_dr_katie_bouman_the_computer_scientist/ekmy2su/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbql1i/this_is_dr_kat...
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    The analysis you linked to seems to be vastly misrepresenting Andrew Chael's contribution. Quote from the link: > Andrew Chael wrote 850k out of the 900k lines of code. He was also the leader of the project. Michael D. Johnson wrote 12k lines of code. Chanchikwan wrote 5k lines of code. The woman? Only wrote 2.4k lines of code. It's a little bit unbelievable that the author of this comment (/u/dragonballcell) nailed all of these fine-grained details (red herrings, perhaps?) and yet glossed over an incredibly important and superficial/trivial detail: that Andrew Chael did not "write 850k LOC", he generated hundreds of thousands of lines of data and committed them to the repo. Needless to say, I think this whole drama is incredibly pointless.
- Not_a_pizza 8y ago
MRD85 8y ago
I think it goes both ways. If she was a man she would have never had any fame from this. However, a man wouldn't have his git checked.
Not_a_pizza 8y ago
If Katie was a man, there would still be a large question as whether to praise one person, except as the leader of the effort.
rjf72 8y ago
People do the analog of this all the time in cases where they believe an individual is receiving disproportionate accolade for a team effort. It's extremely common in entrepreneurial situations. As a typical example, take Elon Musk. Whenever anybody directly attributed e.g. SpaceX's rockets to him, they'd often be quickly "corrected" by a rather large number of people. Elon himself would also go out of his way to emphasize that the things "he" had achieved were largely a product of the great people that made up his team. I think people let their own personal biases destroy their impartiality. Replace her name with Musk, algorithm with science/engineering, and 'image of a black-hole' with reusable rocket. The article would (and does) read like something posted by a sycophantic fanboy. It wouldn't be doing him any favors, and certainly isn't doing her any favors. However, I also do not think this article is representative of her in any way, shape, or form. For instance it tries to frame things in the most narcissistic way possible. They found one image posted where the developer stated, "Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed." So she made that image. Not a team, not the project of a coordinate global effort, no - she made that image. Even the image framing itself is indicative. It's a tiny out of focus image of a laptop and a giant in focus image of her with an artificial pose. The article itself continues with a similar narrative in all the eye-catching spots such as the headline and image captions: "Katie Bouman designed an algorithm that made the image possible" "Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image", and so on. But as mentioned, I doubt this is indicative of the developer herself. She's probably just being used by the media. She's attractive, young, and has the right genitalia = stories that'll get a million clicks and shares = $$$. When you actually read the very small number of quotes from her, they seem much more realistic and in stark contrast to the media sensationalism: - "No one of us could've done it alone. It came together because of lots of different people from many different backgrounds." - "We're a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, and that's what it took to achieve something once thought impossible".
black-tea 8y ago
Yes, I think they would. Why do you have to bring gender into this?
seaborn63 8y ago
I am not a female, but I am a bootcamp grad with no college degree working as a sw engineer. At almost every place I've worked at so far I've had co-workers go through my GitHub and then make comments about how I shouldn't be working there. I have no idea why people are doing this to Dr. Bouman, if it's gender related or not. Just stating my experiences. Just so I'm fair, my GitHub does suck.
- gyrgtyn 8y ago
  that sucks and is very weird
  - seaborn63 8y ago
    It does, but after some months of just taking what they said and keeping on smiling, they lose interest. Every time. Some companies addressed it directly and some let it happen. It also was not every co-worker at every job. Just a select few personality types mainly.
OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago
No.
diedyesterday 8y ago
Of course they would. At least some feminists would. Even now some Nobel prizes (e.g. Watson for DNA structure) and the credit for some discoveries attributed to some men is disputed by some feminist activists. I hate all this identity politics though. Also if she was a man her story and contribution wouldn't be as sensationalized as has been done.

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

tropo 8y ago

Do you think a man in a similar position would be elevated on a pedestal, to the exclusion of the algorithm designer (Mareki Honma) and the primary software author (Andrew Chael)?

streb-lo 8y ago
Yes I think the world would be interested to meet the person behind viewing the first black hole regardless of their gender. >to the exclusion of the algorithm designer and the primary software author? How can you possibly infer that from a git history?
inflatableDodo 8y ago
Who gets elevated on a pedestal and who actually did the work appear to be so badly correlated across the entire breadth of human cultures that you would assume that they only share the most tenuous of causal linkages. So yes, that happens a lot.

adventured 8y ago

I think people get consistently annoyed when blanket credit is given to eg Elon Musk regarding SpaceX (as though he's an aerospace god that did it all by himself), and when far too much credit was given to Steve Jobs regarding the iPhone. SpaceX is a case where Gwynne Shotwell deserves a chunk of the credit that is typically thrown at Musk by the media (because his stardom sells). It's not that they don't deserve their fair share of credit, to be clear. It's that they do not deserve the level of overwhelming credit the media intentionally tries to bestow upon them, to create an idol that sells / generates clicks. You pretty well see it in every thread regarding those two people. The hype train tries to give them credit, whether the media or fans, and other people get annoyed by it and call it out because it's obviously ridiculous to so overly credit such vast accomplishments requiring thousands of contributors to a given individual.

ikeyany 8y ago

Absolutely not. That said, if Katie was a man, her story would not be as groundbreaking in a social context, and thus she would not be as celebrated.

Not_a_pizza 8y ago
It's an asinine premise to say that the sex or race of a person makes an accomplishment more or less praiseworthy. If you really believe all are created equal, then you should be willing to praise equally for the same accomplishment regardless. If you don't, then what you are stating is that a sex or race is normally quite incompetent at such things and that it had to be a greater effort. Individuals do have different circumstances to overcome to reach success, but you won't measure that simply by stating that someone is woman, so she's had things hard. (Edit) It would be totally ridiculous in nearly any society to say that the richest women in society are as disadvantaged as the poorest of men, so we can say that typical SJW habits are totally insignificant at leveling any real playing field. Some women feel threatened by their societies. Then there are some societies that feel threatened by their women. Putting women on some pedestal because you feel they can't normally do something, frankly is insulting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih
- themarkn 8y ago
  Social, historical, and cultural factors undoubtedly make the level of effort required to be successful as a woman in tech or science spaces higher than the level of effort a man has to make for the same level of success (if you could control everything else). This can be true without any derogatory implication about the inherent capabilities of women generally. That you can't tell the difference astonishes me.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    What do you base your first sentence on? Unsurprisingly there is now research indicating that female candidates are now twice as likely to be chosen as equally qualified men for tenure track positions in university science departments. [1] And I'm sure my computer science class was no exception in that the generally ~three females in the class had about 90% of the rest of the class willing to do any and everything they possible could to help them, mostly being happy to just be able to spend time around a woman interested in CS. I have an inside track there as one of those three is now my wife! I don't understand how people can think it would be harder to achieve as a female in STEM in the current environment (and neither does my wife for that matter). You get jobs easier, you get tenure tracks easier, you have enormous support networks, and so on. 30 years ago I'd agree with you, but I think we've long since radically overcorrected and, as you would say, that somebody can't see this does genuinely astonish me. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/1...

kaitai 8y ago

Also, this is a few articles and a Facebook meme. There's no Nobel prize or anything. Why begrudge someone their 15 minutes of science fame for leading a cool effort, making cool science happen?

frontloadpro 8y ago
Because we relate to this situation? The team does work, but someone else gets the credit. I sympathize.

jealous_guy 8y ago

No, but if it was an "unlikely man"... I work with Computer Engineers and Scientists, and I know what is an "unlikely" person. That's a really handsome soft-spoken guy, wearing a shirt and clean shaven. That guy tries to sell you software but you know he has no bloody clue what he's talking about. If it was some "unlikely minority" - for instance Asian person regardless of gender would not be checked, while some other groups might be seen with more suspicion. You can see this as a security check. Yes, it's prejudice - but, in a way, it's a good kind. We aren't saying "she couldn't have done it because she's a girl", all we're saying "based on our life experiences - person of that age, gender and demographics is unlikely to have played the most important role in such a project". Now we try to check our suspicion, if it's proven to be wrong, and indeed she was the most prolific contributor - then next time similar person would get an award we would be less suspicious! All about life-experience!

hnaccy 8y ago

I mean if she was a man I doubt two members of congress would've have bothered to comment or that there'd be article after article focusing on them specifically.

doctorpangloss 8y ago

On the one hand, no, not in a public setting. On the other hand, looking at git histories is basically how the social parts of engineering (e.g., money and power) at a place like Google works, at its fundamental level. This has persisted for a very, very long time. I still remember when people would comment things like, "I worked with so-and-so unorthodox former Google employee, and he didn't commit code." There are a lot of Googlers on HN. There are a lot of people who work at places that culturally align themselves with how that company runs. It probably has something to do with why some women feel underpaid or unwelcome at these places. It definitely has something to do with people commenting things like, "So is this the case of the product manager taking credit..." The tension between the product manager who "didn't do anything" and the engineer who "did all the work" and how the "org" sees that and measures "performance" are all swimming in the back of HN people's heads when they snipe some random academic. Settling the score in a way so reductive is extremely appealing. But at least in duels, the other person gets to fire back.

organsnyder 8y ago
But why would she be assumed to be the product manager (or its equivalent in the academic realm)? She has a doctorate in Computer Science from MIT, so she clearly has the technical chops. And she's in the early stages of her academic career, so she hasn't reached the point where she would have the ability to claim grad students' work as her own (which would also be a huge ethical lapse, though apparently it does happen [often with women as the victims]). In my experience, people don't start looking into these things without some other suspicion. In a work setting, that would be things like impressions of poor productivity, claimed output not matching perceptions of competency, etc. But those involve a ton of data points, based on direct interactions with the person. In this case, the article gives us the following demographic data points: - 29 years old - Woman - Computer Science doctorate from MIT - Assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology Which of those data points suggests that her work output should be questioned?

papermill 8y ago

The answer is an obvious yes. Especially on HN where supposedly we are a technology related site. I suspect the first thing most of us do is to google or ddg github and the computer scientist's name ( male or female ). The better question is if Katie was a man, would BBC or the media single him out for this level of attention. If Katie was a man would the media be trying to make him the face of this scientific enterprise. If Katie was a man, would that story be pushed to the top of HN and be heavily censored to push a particular narrative.

monksy 8y ago

Outside of the serious tech community, no one knows who Linus Torvald is. They do know that Linux exists. Well, I take part of that back. He did have some personal pieces about "he's the guy that's a bully of the project" (when he took a personal hiatus from the project)

newswriter99 8y ago

If Katie was a man, no one would care about her.

CydeWeys 8y ago
Bullshit, this discovery was front page news worldwide. It's ridiculous on its face to assert that recognition isn't given to male scientists, given how many famous male scientists there are.
- newswriter99 8y ago
  Do you think that "random male scientist #237" would be getting as much news coverage, photo-ops and retweets by "YAAS QUEEN SLAY" females as Katie?
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Why are you so bent out of shape by this?
    - newswriter99 8y ago
      Is that you're rebuttal? Attacking my character?
mgfist 8y ago
Just like all the male scientists in history. I bet you haven't heard of Einstein either then right?
- Kaiyou 8y ago
  Can you namedrop a male scientist that did something in 2019?
  - mgfist 7y ago
    Missing the point that this is the first picture of a freaking black hole..

anonytrary 8y ago

People are already doing this on Reddit[0][1], and it's pretty silly because they obviously have no idea how Github or scientific research works. There's an effort underway to undermine Katie Bouman's contributions and it's absolutely ridiculous. Edit: I just checked Twitter, apparently there are thousands of idiots who believe this "850,000/900,000 lines written by Andrew, therefore he wrote the algorithm" narrative. It's amazing how willing people are to eat up a low-hanging narrative as long as it confirms their world-view. All it takes is a very crude understanding of how software development works to see through this narrative. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/bbykvf/katie_bouman_should_not_be_getting_credit_for_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/bbykvf/ka... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbuvff/this_is_andrew_chael_he_wrote_850000_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbuvff/this_is_andrew...

claudiawerner 8y ago
This[0] comment seems to be another in that vein, though it seems to have more details, even if it repeats the 850k lines stat which doesn't really hold up. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbql1i/this_is_dr_katie_bouman_the_computer_scientist/ekmy2su/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbql1i/this_is_dr_kat...
- anonytrary 8y ago
  The analysis you linked to seems to be vastly misrepresenting Andrew Chael's contribution. Quote from the link: > Andrew Chael wrote 850k out of the 900k lines of code. He was also the leader of the project. Michael D. Johnson wrote 12k lines of code. Chanchikwan wrote 5k lines of code. The woman? Only wrote 2.4k lines of code. It's a little bit unbelievable that the author of this comment (/u/dragonballcell) nailed all of these fine-grained details (red herrings, perhaps?) and yet glossed over an incredibly important and superficial/trivial detail: that Andrew Chael did not "write 850k LOC", he generated hundreds of thousands of lines of data and committed them to the repo. Needless to say, I think this whole drama is incredibly pointless.
Not_a_pizza 8y ago

MRD85 8y ago

I think it goes both ways. If she was a man she would have never had any fame from this. However, a man wouldn't have his git checked.

Not_a_pizza 8y ago

If Katie was a man, there would still be a large question as whether to praise one person, except as the leader of the effort.

rjf72 8y ago

People do the analog of this all the time in cases where they believe an individual is receiving disproportionate accolade for a team effort. It's extremely common in entrepreneurial situations. As a typical example, take Elon Musk. Whenever anybody directly attributed e.g. SpaceX's rockets to him, they'd often be quickly "corrected" by a rather large number of people. Elon himself would also go out of his way to emphasize that the things "he" had achieved were largely a product of the great people that made up his team. I think people let their own personal biases destroy their impartiality. Replace her name with Musk, algorithm with science/engineering, and 'image of a black-hole' with reusable rocket. The article would (and does) read like something posted by a sycophantic fanboy. It wouldn't be doing him any favors, and certainly isn't doing her any favors. However, I also do not think this article is representative of her in any way, shape, or form. For instance it tries to frame things in the most narcissistic way possible. They found one image posted where the developer stated, "Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed." So she made that image. Not a team, not the project of a coordinate global effort, no - she made that image. Even the image framing itself is indicative. It's a tiny out of focus image of a laptop and a giant in focus image of her with an artificial pose. The article itself continues with a similar narrative in all the eye-catching spots such as the headline and image captions: "Katie Bouman designed an algorithm that made the image possible" "Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image", and so on. But as mentioned, I doubt this is indicative of the developer herself. She's probably just being used by the media. She's attractive, young, and has the right genitalia = stories that'll get a million clicks and shares = $$$. When you actually read the very small number of quotes from her, they seem much more realistic and in stark contrast to the media sensationalism: - "No one of us could've done it alone. It came together because of lots of different people from many different backgrounds." - "We're a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, and that's what it took to achieve something once thought impossible".

black-tea 8y ago

Yes, I think they would. Why do you have to bring gender into this?

seaborn63 8y ago

I am not a female, but I am a bootcamp grad with no college degree working as a sw engineer. At almost every place I've worked at so far I've had co-workers go through my GitHub and then make comments about how I shouldn't be working there. I have no idea why people are doing this to Dr. Bouman, if it's gender related or not. Just stating my experiences. Just so I'm fair, my GitHub does suck.

gyrgtyn 8y ago
that sucks and is very weird
- seaborn63 8y ago
  It does, but after some months of just taking what they said and keeping on smiling, they lose interest. Every time. Some companies addressed it directly and some let it happen. It also was not every co-worker at every job. Just a select few personality types mainly.

OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago

No.

diedyesterday 8y ago

Of course they would. At least some feminists would. Even now some Nobel prizes (e.g. Watson for DNA structure) and the credit for some discoveries attributed to some men is disputed by some feminist activists. I hate all this identity politics though. Also if she was a man her story and contribution wouldn't be as sensationalized as has been done.