Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png
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Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
221–230 of 547 posts
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#222Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png
He probably coded her algorithm
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Now we just need the BBC not to wet themselves because a woman #gasp# can do science.
They are not doing that.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#224Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant on the channel branding, intro, etc. Usually when these things are TEDx they say so really obviously. Did this talk's status get upgraded?
The main TED channel occasionally reposts talks from TEDx conferences. This one should be the original posting: https://youtu.be/P7n2rYt9wfU
So this talk got upgraded then?
They don't make a habit of posting the shitty TEDx talks to the main channel, I'm guessing. (And there's plenty of those.) This is definitely high quality relative to most TEDx talks, so I understand why it was upgraded.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#226Earlier 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?
Very few science papers have a single author these days. She's listed as first author, so presumably her contribution was at least as important as anyone else's.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#227Title ought to reflect the fact that this woman has a doctorate from MIT and should rightfully be addressed as Dr. Katie Bouman.
Her name is Katie Bouman. She can also be addressed as Dr. Katie Bouman.
Sure.
But in a published headline, one ought to be addressed by their formal title.
Differences exist between casual conversation and publication. A distinction I shouldn’t have to point out as one that exists.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#228I'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…
In my experience this is common for this type of news about "prodigies" on HN. I remember the same types of reactions a few years ago about an article about a child who made the headlines (it even prompted a response by pg IIRC). Was it Malala? I can't remember. I think it's just that many people feel threatened or inadequate when they (naturally) compare themselves to these people. It's tempting to put them down so…
the closest one that comes to mind is the teenager who was credited with that article summarizing algorithm that I think Yahoo or someone ended up buying. My memory is pretty hazy on it, but in that case it seemed more like a group of researchers actually made it and I'm not 100% certain how he was connected. I remember that one getting a bit of "hey, what a second" kind of comments about it.
I think in this particular case, I have no problem with it. One, she obviously had a big part in it. Maybe it is blow back because they feel a picture of the inside of a black hole isn't a big deal and people are making it into something big? In my opinion, it is. I remember middle school teachers almost scoffing at the idea of a picture of a black hole and yet, 25 years later, here we are. Regardless, she in her twenties has generated something that researchers spend a lifetime trying to find so kudos to her. I'm sure there is a certain gendered element to it in both cases (for and against) and it'd probably be naive to think there wasn't.
Even if this were a smaller aspect of what these researchers were aiming for, I'd love to see a documentary series on what various team members worked on (and in her case, discovered). An image generated by radio waves and she (maybe with others?) was able to construct an image out of that? That's impressive. Probably not, but I'd be curious if this kind of thing could be localized in a way that it could be the "sound to visual model" element of a system so that blind people could make out the world a bit more directly (obviously, there'd need to be a means for them to consume said model. All of this is way above me and my pay grade).
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#229Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png
Nice 4chan-style image and completely uninformed and idiotic comment. the large majority of those 850K lines of code were machine generated, models, or docs. Go back to whatever alt-right hole you crawled out of.
Citation definitely needed.
The software is "ehtim", here are the contributors:
https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/graphs/contributors
He says:
> I wrote ehtim (eht-imaging) as a python framework for implementing regularized maximum likelihood imaging methods on EHT data. In the last two years, it has evolved into a flexible environment for manipulating, simulating, analyzing, and imaging interferometric data and is a workhorse of the EHT’s data analysis pipeline.
Source: https://achael.github.io/_pages/software/
At first I thought the image was being disingenuous by cherry-picking commits to highlight, but take a look for yourself, she really did mostly just modify plotting, add options and fix bugs:
https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/commits?author=klbouma...
There's nothing wrong with that, but claiming that she is "behind the software" is just bullshit.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#230Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png
Nice 4chan-style image and completely uninformed and idiotic comment. the large majority of those 850K lines of code were machine generated, models, or docs. Go back to whatever alt-right hole you crawled out of.
"Go back to whatever alt-right hole you crawled out of."
Not sure if trying to be strong pun.
I guess it's no different than a pharaoh taking credit for the pyramids built on the backs of the slaves.