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

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

#131

Post by tpoacher »

californiadreem wrote: post #24
tpoacher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, reve…

To be fair, if you want to go drown in the cosmic ocean of unbeing, I don't think anyone, hegemon or no, is stopping you but your own self-imposed linguistic and social structures. It is ultimately an irony that the epistemological position--that Civilization is fundamentally about domination and cannot stand marginalized or dissident narratives--has only and could only flourish under civilizations in their least-con…

I have to say, I am slightly disappointed that the opening of Sokal's "Transgressing the boundaries" paper isn't immediately recognizable by an HN audience ...

oh well.

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

#132

Post by peterfirefly »

btilly wrote: post #7
zinclozenge wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Today, sure. It's famous. But as https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1464518031000160... points out, the analysis technique that makes it possible to deduce the structure from the image was first developed 2 years earlier in a paper by Crick, Cochran and Vand . Note the lead author. In 1953, Francis Crick was one of a handful of people on the planet who would have made the connection. In fact he was able to m…

But, but... we were always told that Franklin was an expert crystallographer and that Watson and Crick were bumbling amateurs who knew nothing, NOTHING, about crystallography!

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

#133

Post by anonymouskimmer »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #130
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even know what ugly thing you are trying to say about the three people you named. > If you look for someone to blame, you will find someone to blame. But that someone may be a scapegoat. For Eileen Bailey I first blame her husband cheating, and then I blame his friends at the tennis club for not letting her know about it. For Ann Coles I blame her husband for his personality disorder, and a society that tol…

For various reasons, I've read a lot of research on human sexuality. It's nice when two people can make their marriage work and be happily monogamous. It's unfortunate that we collectively haven't yet sorted out how to establish happy monogamy more reliably. For your second example, blaming someone for their personality disorder isn't reasonable. People don't wake up one morning and go "I think I would like to acquir…

> For your second example, blaming someone for their personality disorder isn't reasonable.

We all have a responsibility for not making the lives of the close to, or dependent upon us, miserable. And if we can't do that we have the responsibility of ending our relationship. A personality disorder is ultimately a collection of excuses and rationales as to why we are more important than the other. Naming this a "personality disorder" doesn't eliminate responsibility, or blame.

> It's unfortunate that we collectively haven't yet sorted out how to establish happy monogamy more reliably.

It's fine if we haven't, there are plenty of people who are very straightforward about being non-monomgamous, and plenty of others who have tried to be monogamous but called it off after a time once they found out that they couldn't maintain it, or at the very least were truthful about their infidelity to their spouse if they couldn't, for some reason, end the marriage, and were respectful enough to keep it as out-of-their face as possible. Again, it's the treating others as less important than our own drives that's the problem.

> I still have no idea at all what or who you are trying to blame with your third example or what you are trying to say you wish were different.

1) Conscription is generally a bad idea. Especially in time of peace. Especially when the wars are not wars of defense. And most especially when there isn't a particular problem recruiting volunteers.

2) Don't make examples of people who come from shitty situations, and have made it clear time and time again that they won't do what you're asking of them.

3) Don't punish people harder for unrelated crimes, personality defects, or just things that you, personally, find annoying or less than worthwhile about them. This is what implicit bias research is attempting to address.

People are important in and of themselves. Not as extensions of you (or more broadly, whatever the government has deemed important). Even though he got paid for it, Slovik was essentially treated as a slave, and executed for disobeying his masters. Whereas 21,000+ other "slaves" were pardoned because their masters didn't find them to be all that bad.

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

#134

Post by lern_too_spel »

peterfirefly wrote: post #105
lern_too_spel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korean IQs went up by an entire standard deviation for people born between 1970 and 1990. Japanese IQs went up by more than a standard deviation between 1940 and 1965. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918... If you truly believe your extraordinary claims, you must believe these countries performed large scale human genetic engineering during these periods in a conspiracy hidden from the…

South Korea and Japan had severely malnourished populations -- which was also reflected in their heights. Are you claiming that African-Americans are similarly malnourished? Would they become giants if, somehow, they could be properly fed?

I'm claiming that if they were properly educated, their intelligence would increase. Indeed, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs has been steadily closing, with a 1/3 reduction between 1972 and 2002, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs is smaller than the gap between black African IQs and white American IQs, and black Americans in 1995 have the same IQ as white Americans in 1945. This is explainable by reduction in school segregation and increases in white collar job opportunities for blacks in the US, leading to slow increases in education culture in black communities. There is a nutritional component as well, with the average heights of black males almost catching up to the average height of white males: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Height-cm-of-Americans-b...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/heres-why-the...

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

#135

Post by btilly »

peterfirefly wrote: post #132
btilly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, sure. It's famous. But as https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1464518031000160... points out, the analysis technique that makes it possible to deduce the structure from the image was first developed 2 years earlier in a paper by Crick, Cochran and Vand . Note the lead author. In 1953, Francis Crick was one of a handful of people on the planet who would have made the connection. In fact he was able to m…

But, but... we were always told that Franklin was an expert crystallographer and that Watson and Crick were bumbling amateurs who knew nothing, NOTHING, about crystallography!

Franklin was. Which is why she was the one who actually produced that image. And if the problem could have been solved by deducing the crystalline structure from variant A, she would have been a much better choice.

The fact that Crick was the world expert on the one obscure thing about crystallography that mattered here doesn't mean that Franklin wasn't the real expert. Every expert has gaps in their knowledge.

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

#136

Post by dekhn »

btilly wrote: post #135
peterfirefly wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, but... we were always told that Franklin was an expert crystallographer and that Watson and Crick were bumbling amateurs who knew nothing, NOTHING, about crystallography!

Franklin was. Which is why she was the one who actually produced that image. And if the problem could have been solved by deducing the crystalline structure from variant A, she would have been a much better choice. The fact that Crick was the world expert on the one obscure thing about crystallography that mattered here doesn't mean that Franklin wasn't the real expert. Every expert has gaps in their knowledge.

Gosling produced the image, not Franklin.

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

#137

Post by dekhn »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #124
andrewflnr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dying young is not generally a problem for getting recognition. Certainly there are lots of famous discoverers who died young (Evariste Galois comes to mind, but is maybe too extreme an example to be representative). I agree the impact of informal communication likely played an underrated role.

She didn't receive the Nobel Prize because it's only given to people still alive. She had already died. Scientists et al tend to be recognized in old age or after their death, not while still relatively young. This is so true that we have special awards specifically designed to recognize people under a certain age, such as The Fields Medal for mathematicians under age 40. There are 64 Fields Medalist. Only one is a w…

it's unlikely franklin would have been the third recipient of the prize even if she had not passed away. From what we can infer from the extant data, she didn't have the core realization that DNA formed a double helix and that structure was precisely linked to its function as a template for genetic reproduction. ANd she didn't really have the core recognition of base-pairing that enables the double helix.

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

#138

Post by peterfirefly »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #134
peterfirefly wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea and Japan had severely malnourished populations -- which was also reflected in their heights. Are you claiming that African-Americans are similarly malnourished? Would they become giants if, somehow, they could be properly fed?

I'm claiming that if they were properly educated, their intelligence would increase. Indeed, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs has been steadily closing, with a 1/3 reduction between 1972 and 2002, the gap between black American IQs and white American IQs is smaller than the gap between black African IQs and white American IQs, and black Americans in 1995 have the same IQ as white Americans in…

Ever heard of the Lothian Birth-Cohort Studies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothian_birth-cohort_studies

IQ can be measured quite well at the age of 10-11, before the children have had much education. It also turns out to be quite stable... and doesn't really go up if somebody goes all the way to a bachelor's degree.

This means that your education excuse either isn't true at all (most likely) or that it has really, really important, huge, big, great confounders (highly unlikely).

Your height figure tells me that there really isn't much of a height difference between whites and blacks in the US. There is a clear (but small) height difference between age cohorts but it is utterly dwarfed by the differences between age cohorts in South Korea and Japan (and by the height differences between North Korea and South Korea).

This means that your nutrition excuse either isn't true at all (most likely) or that it has really, really important, huge, big, great confounders (highly unlikely).

Or maybe Watson was on to something, whether we like or not. You clearly don't, I don't either, and I am pretty sure Watson doesn't like it one bit either.

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

#139

Post by peterfirefly »

btilly wrote: post #135
peterfirefly wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, but... we were always told that Franklin was an expert crystallographer and that Watson and Crick were bumbling amateurs who knew nothing, NOTHING, about crystallography!

Franklin was. Which is why she was the one who actually produced that image. And if the problem could have been solved by deducing the crystalline structure from variant A, she would have been a much better choice. The fact that Crick was the world expert on the one obscure thing about crystallography that mattered here doesn't mean that Franklin wasn't the real expert. Every expert has gaps in their knowledge.

Using Fourier transforms doesn't seem obscure to me. It seems to me -- today -- that it is an obvious thing to do. It probably was back then, too, if you were a physicist who was good at math.

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

#140

Post by DoreenMichele »

dekhn wrote: post #137
DoreenMichele wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She didn't receive the Nobel Prize because it's only given to people still alive. She had already died. Scientists et al tend to be recognized in old age or after their death, not while still relatively young. This is so true that we have special awards specifically designed to recognize people under a certain age, such as The Fields Medal for mathematicians under age 40. There are 64 Fields Medalist. Only one is a w…

it's unlikely franklin would have been the third recipient of the prize even if she had not passed away. From what we can infer from the extant data, she didn't have the core realization that DNA formed a double helix and that structure was precisely linked to its function as a template for genetic reproduction. ANd she didn't really have the core recognition of base-pairing that enables the double helix.

I'm not arguing that she definitely, slam dunk, would have been included had she lived. I'm arguing that she couldn't even be considered due to having died beforehand.

Scientific recognition tends to come in old age or posthumously. She's getting hers posthumously.

That's not some bizarroland weird statistical outlier that only happens to women due to sexism denying them credit during their lifetime.

Gregor Mendel is remembered as the father of genetics. His work wasn't recognized until 30 years or so after his death.

Alfred Wegener came up with the theory of plate tectonics. It didn't gain acceptance until 20 years or so after his death.

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