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Does it matter? I think this misses the forest for the trees. Yeah, we can focus on the first to discover something, but awards and acknowledgments are often

Does it matter? I think this misses the forest for the trees. Yeah, we can focus on the first to discover something, but awards and acknowledgments are often on first to publish, e.g. Make it public. After all, what does your grand descovery matter if you're the only one that knows about it and someone working in parallel finds it also and publishes first? And how does the scientific community verify the veracity of discovering first if you didnt publish first? Hilbert might have know about it first, but what does it matter to the world writ large if he didnt publish? Einstein published, and thus the world knows and he is thus recognized for that.

onion2k 7y ago
Does it matter? If we want an accurate historical record of human achievement, yes. That's separate to the end result. If you're focused on the theory and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter that Einstein wrote it either. We could remove the attribution entirely and the theory would still exist. Hilbert might have know about it first, but what does it matter to the world writ large if he didnt publish? Einstein published, and thus the world knows and he is thus recognized for that. That depends on why Hilbert didn't publish first. There are plenty of examples of people from minorities (women and PoC especially) discovering theorems but the scientific community ignoring them, and then a rich white man publishing the same theory to great acclaim. And then, even hundreds of years later, governments failing to fund the education of those minorities on the basis that they're genetically inferior because no one from those minorities has published anything of note. Correctly attributing discoveries to the right people does make a difference in the wider context of society.
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  There are plenty of examples of people from minorities (women and PoC especially) discovering theorems but the scientific community ignoring them Can you provide 2 or 3 examples of that? I know there are STEM contributions on the engineering side - patents, work at NASA - that often go unmentioned, but I've never heard of solid evidence that actual provable research was ignored.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Esther Lederberg - discovered lambda phage in bacteria but the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery went to her husband. Jocelyn Bell Burnell - discovered pulsars and went on to work with her thesis advisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle. They got the Nobel Prize for Physics and she didn't. Ada Lovelace - invented computer programming but the credit went to Charles Babbage because he invented the hardware (one of the more well known examples; she gets some credit these days). Rosalind Franklin - discovered the double helix structure of DNA using x-rays. Her theory was denounced by Watson and Crick who believed it was a single helix. They went on to win a Nobel Prize when they changed their minds and said it was actually a double helix after all. Lise Meitner - discovered nuclear fission but the credit and Nobel Prize went to her lab partner Otto Hahn.
    - bobcostas55 7y ago
      >Rosalind Franklin - discovered the double helix structure of DNA using x-rays. This is a gross mischaracterization. Fraklin certainly took some pictures of DNA using x-ray crystallography, but she absolutely did not figure out the structure.
      - sannee 7y ago
        Yeah - and if you believe Watsons autobiography, she was strongly opposed to the idea that DNA had a helical structure until Watson and Crick basically figured it out and presented her with some very convincing arguments. Franklins contributions seem pretty overstated compared to how people don't mention all the other people involved that had some critical insight.
    - gjm11 7y ago
      Unfortunately, a lot of that appears to be wrong. (Unfortunately because I'm sure it's true that recognition goes disproportionately to white men in rich Western countries, but you harm your case by giving examples of this that turn out to be wrong.) Joshua Lederberg's Nobel prize was not for the lambda phage discovered by his wife, it was "for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria". No question about Burnell. That's a major scandal. The only good news is that everyone knows it now, and I can't remember any occasion when the discovery of pulsars has been mentioned without something along the lines of "of course it was Burnell who discovered the pulsar and it's shocking that Ryle and Hewish got the Nobel and she didn't". I've never seen Babbage get the credit for inventing computer programming. I have seen him get the credit for designing the first programmable computer, which is fair enough because he did. I'm interested in the evidence that Franklin discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. For sure her work was super-important and it's scandalous that she didn't get a share in the Nobel prize, but so far as I can tell she specifically thought the structure of DNA probably wasn't helical, even though others working on the problem thought it was. (It doesn't look to me as if Crick and Watson ever thought the structure was a single helix, either. I think their first model was a triple helix with the phosphate groups on the inside, and Franklin pointed out to them that the phosphates had to be on the outside.) Meitner should absolutely have got a Nobel (or a share in it) for fission. But what reason is there to think that sexism is why she didn't? Frisch had about as much claim as Meitner, and he was passed over in the exact same way. Incidentally, what you said before is that it often happens that women and PoC discover theorems and are ignored while rich white men do the same later and get the credit, but none of your examples involves discovering theorems. [EDITED to add:] Oh, but maybe "theorems" was just a typo for "theories", in which case you should probably ignore this paragraph.
- xnam 7y ago
  "Rich white men" like Abel, Galois and Cantor? Way to derail a thread. I'm sure women would be better off in countries run by "PoC" and not the big, bad, white men.

onion2k 7y ago

Does it matter? If we want an accurate historical record of human achievement, yes. That's separate to the end result. If you're focused on the theory and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter that Einstein wrote it either. We could remove the attribution entirely and the theory would still exist. Hilbert might have know about it first, but what does it matter to the world writ large if he didnt publish? Einstein published, and thus the world knows and he is thus recognized for that. That depends on why Hilbert didn't publish first. There are plenty of examples of people from minorities (women and PoC especially) discovering theorems but the scientific community ignoring them, and then a rich white man publishing the same theory to great acclaim. And then, even hundreds of years later, governments failing to fund the education of those minorities on the basis that they're genetically inferior because no one from those minorities has published anything of note. Correctly attributing discoveries to the right people does make a difference in the wider context of society.

lr4444lr 7y ago
There are plenty of examples of people from minorities (women and PoC especially) discovering theorems but the scientific community ignoring them Can you provide 2 or 3 examples of that? I know there are STEM contributions on the engineering side - patents, work at NASA - that often go unmentioned, but I've never heard of solid evidence that actual provable research was ignored.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Esther Lederberg - discovered lambda phage in bacteria but the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery went to her husband. Jocelyn Bell Burnell - discovered pulsars and went on to work with her thesis advisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle. They got the Nobel Prize for Physics and she didn't. Ada Lovelace - invented computer programming but the credit went to Charles Babbage because he invented the hardware (one of the more well known examples; she gets some credit these days). Rosalind Franklin - discovered the double helix structure of DNA using x-rays. Her theory was denounced by Watson and Crick who believed it was a single helix. They went on to win a Nobel Prize when they changed their minds and said it was actually a double helix after all. Lise Meitner - discovered nuclear fission but the credit and Nobel Prize went to her lab partner Otto Hahn.
  - bobcostas55 7y ago
    >Rosalind Franklin - discovered the double helix structure of DNA using x-rays. This is a gross mischaracterization. Fraklin certainly took some pictures of DNA using x-ray crystallography, but she absolutely did not figure out the structure.
    - sannee 7y ago
      Yeah - and if you believe Watsons autobiography, she was strongly opposed to the idea that DNA had a helical structure until Watson and Crick basically figured it out and presented her with some very convincing arguments. Franklins contributions seem pretty overstated compared to how people don't mention all the other people involved that had some critical insight.
  - gjm11 7y ago
    Unfortunately, a lot of that appears to be wrong. (Unfortunately because I'm sure it's true that recognition goes disproportionately to white men in rich Western countries, but you harm your case by giving examples of this that turn out to be wrong.) Joshua Lederberg's Nobel prize was not for the lambda phage discovered by his wife, it was "for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria". No question about Burnell. That's a major scandal. The only good news is that everyone knows it now, and I can't remember any occasion when the discovery of pulsars has been mentioned without something along the lines of "of course it was Burnell who discovered the pulsar and it's shocking that Ryle and Hewish got the Nobel and she didn't". I've never seen Babbage get the credit for inventing computer programming. I have seen him get the credit for designing the first programmable computer, which is fair enough because he did. I'm interested in the evidence that Franklin discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. For sure her work was super-important and it's scandalous that she didn't get a share in the Nobel prize, but so far as I can tell she specifically thought the structure of DNA probably wasn't helical, even though others working on the problem thought it was. (It doesn't look to me as if Crick and Watson ever thought the structure was a single helix, either. I think their first model was a triple helix with the phosphate groups on the inside, and Franklin pointed out to them that the phosphates had to be on the outside.) Meitner should absolutely have got a Nobel (or a share in it) for fission. But what reason is there to think that sexism is why she didn't? Frisch had about as much claim as Meitner, and he was passed over in the exact same way. Incidentally, what you said before is that it often happens that women and PoC discover theorems and are ignored while rich white men do the same later and get the credit, but none of your examples involves discovering theorems. [EDITED to add:] Oh, but maybe "theorems" was just a typo for "theories", in which case you should probably ignore this paragraph.
xnam 7y ago
"Rich white men" like Abel, Galois and Cantor? Way to derail a thread. I'm sure women would be better off in countries run by "PoC" and not the big, bad, white men.