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Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

bbc.com

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Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#131

Post by titanix2 »

ralusek wrote: post #109
dalemyers wrote: post #44

I've read comments on Hacker News for many years, often finding them a useful source of additional information and insight into details from whatever the linked piece is. Sometimes these threads are full of only subtly veiled hatred and leave me with a feeling of disgust. This thread is one of those. There have been countless threads over the years where a man gets the credit for something a team has worked on and th…

[flagged]

Exactly. The sheer fact that the headline use "Katie Bouman" instead of Dr. Bouman or name her at all shows that the important point conveyed by the title and the article is the sex of the researcher. Don't believe it? BBC didn't use the name of Pr. Honjo and Pr. Allison for the Nobel prize of Medecine. [1] I guess getting a Nobel prize is not important enough to be mentioned in headline... for men.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45704322

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#132

Post by scott_s »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #119
black_puppydog wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also in the links in that repo, but may be more interesting to some folks here: Katie's paper on VLBI reconstruction: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.01413 This is how I learned about the topic and I think it's well suited for computery folks, since it was published in CVPR.

There are 6 authors for that paper, the way you linked it suggested it's solely by her; are the other authors listed honorarily? Similarly the title suggests she worked alone on the project. Which seems exceedingly unlikely given the need for telescope time and computing time and the wide range of disciplines I imagine the project covers ... did she work alone. That must be almost unique in experimentalism nowadays?

Papers are routinely credited to their first author. Everyone understand the co-authors also took part. She also clearly credits the rest of the team in the posted BBC article.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#133

Post by [deleted] »

matt4077 wrote: post #85

Here's a HN story from a while back titled "The Man Behind Windows PowerShell"[0]. Of the 129 comments on that story, not one discussed how software development at Microsoft is always a team effort. Or checked any repositories counting LoC to quantify the value of his contribution. Meanwhile, in this thread, I see 6 of 73 comments as of now not discussing a woman's relative contribution to a team effort, and how she…

[deleted]

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#134

Post by raphman »

bubblewrap wrote: post #113
telesilla wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I felt isolated in STEM 20 years ago was the very lack of role models. That's changing and I know for a fact, as I interact with young women, that seeing another woman in action as a professional in STEM helps them feel there is a place for them. It definitely fosters a sense of encouragement to pursue higher dreams.

What prevents you from taking a man as a role model?

A 'role model' is someone who shares your background and is successful in an area of interest where you would like to participate/contribute (science, art, sports, politics, ...) . It's someone who demonstrates that 'someone like you' can be successful, too. Therefore, the closer this role model is to your inherent and unchangeable properties (age, sex/gender, origin, social class), the more it can inspire you.

Surely, a man can be a role model for a woman in science (and vice versa) - e.g., if you are from the same small ethnic minority as the role model. However, male/female lifestyle, upbringing, interests, challenges, etc. are quite different in general, even in otherwise very homogeneous (western) societies. Therefore, the role model having the same sex/gender is very important.

(Just my view - I don't have evidence or experience in this regard).

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#135

Post by kpp »

scott_s wrote: post #128
kpp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist There are no woman scientists, science has no gender. The article is sexiest not people who are curious what Dr. Bouman actually did to be honored to mention in BBC article.

People don’t surrender their outside identity when they become a scientist.

People don't surrender their outside political views, their lineage, sexual orientation and other background either. See how stupid the article would sound if titled: "Jane Doe: The divorced homosexual black democratic woman with three children behind the first black hole image". Science matters.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#136

Post by charliepark »

kpp wrote: post #115
nagVenkat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add some more context... of the 850k lines, 500k lines are mostly models and machine generated code. Andrew is definitely smart (smarter than an average HN user) and his code is very important but I have never seen so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist. She never took any credit and clearly said that this was a team effort. Some of the top posts on reddit are trying to mischaracterize th…

> so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist There are no woman scientists, science has no gender. The article is sexiest not people who are curious what Dr. Bouman actually did to be honored to mention in BBC article.

It's fallacious to presume that — because gender, sex, race, etc. shouldn't impact peoples' opportunities — that we should treat is as though it doesn't impact them.

This is a good article on the concept: https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dont-see-race/

[Edit:] Or this, as a complementary one: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-see-race

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#137

Post by scraft »

dalemyers wrote: post #44

I've read comments on Hacker News for many years, often finding them a useful source of additional information and insight into details from whatever the linked piece is. Sometimes these threads are full of only subtly veiled hatred and leave me with a feeling of disgust. This thread is one of those. There have been countless threads over the years where a man gets the credit for something a team has worked on and th…

I am glad she got credit and I am glad in that respect she got treated equally. I am a little sad that her gender is a 'thing', as in I think I have seen more comments on various news site comments, social media, etc. that are quick to specifically point out she is a woman. I get they are trying to be positive, but it also has this weird reverse side where it is like "An amazing feat in STEM has been achieved, but you better brace yourself, it wasn't done by a man, it was done by a woman! A real living woman!". I understand the argument of needing to make a shout about it to help encourage more women into the field and to try to push against previous years of women not being in the limelight for work like this. But at the same point, every time it is specifically called out, it feels like something that is (obviously) only done for a woman, so therefore it is treating the achievement differently than if a man had achieved it.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Anyway, I do not want to sidetrack from this amazing achievement.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#138

Post by cs02rm0 »

scott_s wrote: post #132
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 6 authors for that paper, the way you linked it suggested it's solely by her; are the other authors listed honorarily? Similarly the title suggests she worked alone on the project. Which seems exceedingly unlikely given the need for telescope time and computing time and the wide range of disciplines I imagine the project covers ... did she work alone. That must be almost unique in experimentalism nowadays?

Papers are routinely credited to their first author. Everyone understand the co-authors also took part. She also clearly credits the rest of the team in the posted BBC article.

She does clearly credit the rest of the team, which is admirable as she's also clearly been key to this piece of work.

Somehow though my facebook feed is already littered with images saying she was single-handedly responsible and no one's talking about her.

https://bit.ly/2Gkfk7f

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#139

Post by wycy »

yetihehe wrote: post #116
founderling wrote: post #104

I posted a comment 10 minutes ago and it got immediately downvoted into oblivion. Could you guys please tell me why it is such a bad question to ask? Thank you! Here it is: Does it really count as an image of a black hole? Since no light is reflected by the black hole, all we see is light bend by the gravity of the black hole. Haven't we seen that before? I have the strong feeling there have been photos of star const…

> Could you guys please tell me why it is such a bad question to ask? Because it's nitpicking[0]. When scientists show you results of several years of work of many people, you effectively chose to ask question like "Is it really violet? Seems more purple to me". You don't contribute anything to discussion, but just want to sound smart-ass. [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nitpicking

It seems like a valid question. We're also told that a black hole isn't visible, and we're told that this image is reconstructed from sensor data. Whether or not it's really fair to consider it a "photograph" of a black hole boils down to exactly how much artistic license is taken in reconstructing the sensor data. Not knowing how much of this is artistic license, I'm willing to take the scientists at their word, but to ask the question doesn't seem like a nitpick.

EDIT: In Dr Bouman's TED talk, she notes that there are an infinite number of ways the sensor data could be constructed into an image, and that they were looking for a construction that looks like what they expect things in our universe look like. So, there's some ambiguity in the definition of "photograph"

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#140

Post by ta8883021 »

First, congrats to the entire team for the sum of their contributions.

Now I'm simply trying to be objective here. If we look at the main github repo https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/graphs/contributors

She is contributor #4, with only 90 commits. Meanwhile, the #1 contributor, https://github.com/achael, has written over 850k lines of code.

Katie was making basic Python syntax errors only one year ago in the repo. Is she really behind the first black hole image?

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