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What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

nature.com

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Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#11

Post by nextos »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #2

> She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA…

I think the real issue is that her boss shared her data with W&C without her permission.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#12

Post by dekhn »

zinclozenge wrote: post #6
pazimzadeh wrote: post #2

> She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA…

As I learned it, Photograph 51 was so good that anybody with any crystallography experience would have been able to tell the structure at a glance. Exactly, like you said she wanted to sit on it and get more data because, allegedly, she had observed Hoogsteen base pairing, or some other non-canonical base pair that escapes me.

The photograph tells you the gross structure ("it's a helix") and also that it's a double helix. It doesn't have any real information of the specific structure/location of the bases. That only came later when full x-ray crystallography of 3D crystals (not 2D pulled fibers) was done.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#13

Post by mihaic »

photochemsyn wrote: post #5

My favorite candidate for 'getting cheated for credit' on the DNA discovery is Erwin Chargaff, whose work pointed towards the specific base pairing involved. Of course, the arbitrary 3-person cutoff for Nobel Prizes is not at all reflective of how science is done in practice in terms of the numbers of people involved over time in any major discovery: > "Key conclusions from Erwin Chargaff's work are now known as Char…

My favorite anecdote with Chargaff is how he first told Linus Pauling about how the ratio between the nucleotide pairs A-T and C-G is constant on a sea voyage. Pauling thought he was unpleasant and ignored him. It turns out you need to sometimes be sociable to stay in the history books.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#14

Post by pclmulqdq »

nextos wrote: post #11
pazimzadeh wrote: post #2

> She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA…

I think the real issue is that her boss shared her data with W&C without her permission.

As I understand it, that was the real issue with their work from a scientific integrity perspective. Some people speculate that she would have been the third person on the Nobel prize if she were still alive to receive it (Nobels are given only to living contributors).

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#15

Post by dekhn »

zabzonk wrote: post #10
pazimzadeh wrote: post #2

> She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA…

didn't pauling think that dna was a triple helix? how this could of worked i have never understood.

yes, triple helix with the phosphates (which are highly charged, and thus repelling each other) at the center!

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#16

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Rosalind Franklin wrote an obituary for the helix theory.[1] She thought her image debunked the helix theory, even though when you know the double helix structure of DNA you can very clearly see it in the X-ray image.

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/An-obituary-written-by-R...

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#17

Post by _Wintermute »

nextos wrote: post #11
pazimzadeh wrote: post #2

> She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA…

I think the real issue is that her boss shared her data with W&C without her permission.

That's not true. Wilkins had as much right to share that data as Franklin, and everyone seems to forget Raymond Gosling who actually generated the data.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#18

Post by maire »

Here is a 2003 documentary on the same subject.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/rosalind-franklin-lega...

My take away was that Rosalind Franklin did support the Watson Crick paper but that there was some conflict leading up to the paper. She did not seem to think her ideas were stolen.

It did not help that after Franklin died - Watson wrote a hit piece on Franklin. I think that is what caused people to question if Watson was above board while Franklin was alive.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#19

Post by underlipton »

I'll be the one to sacrifice my Internet Points by bringing up the notion that the question of who discovered DNA's structure is not nearly as important as is the question of why the question of who discovered DNA's structure is significant. It is, of course, primarily and famously the specter of the erasure of women from scientifically and socially significant developments, the thematic subject that this article addresses.

There is another aspect of this significance, however, in the way that James Watson's impropriety - in his work, and in his telling of the story of his work - reflects on, and is reflected by, his later racist and sexist intellectual misadventures. The myth of a singular - well, dual - genius who moves humanity forward lends credence to his bigotry - how can the father of genetic science be wrong about the influence of genetics on society? - while the truth dashes that credibility (without necessarily undoing the significance of his actual contributions). And it is a controversy that gets re-litigated perennially not because people truly care that much about the discovery or discovers, but because our understanding of these events underpin beliefs, our understanding of the world, that are as sharply relevant today as a shard of glass.

To retreat to attempting an exhaustive reconstruction of events might be comfortable, but it is also a bit dangerous - it assumes a totality of understanding that may be found wanting - and, more importantly, it misses the core of why the controversy exists in the first place. Peer esteem may be foremost on an academic's mind, but we've long left the ivory tower on this one.

Re: What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

#20

Post by tpoacher »

underlipton wrote: post #19

I'll be the one to sacrifice my Internet Points by bringing up the notion that the question of who discovered DNA's structure is not nearly as important as is the question of why the question of who discovered DNA's structure is significant. It is, of course, primarily and famously the specter of the erasure of women from scientifically and socially significant developments, the thematic subject that this article add…

Quite. It is likely true that deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined what's commonly referred to as Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics. Revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility, and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of "objectivity".

It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality", no less than social "reality", is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific "knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.

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