It is common for lead men to take credit for team's work (e.g. gravitational wave detection), so it should be no different here. But was she really the lead? She clearly wasnt the implementation lead (from Github contributions) and the I havent seen EHT list her as the official project lead (which to me seems reasonable given that she was a postdoc at the time of this work). So if she was neither the implementation nor the operational lead, then why is she singled out for credit?
Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
301–310 of 547 posts
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#302Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…
I agree. She's said many times she wasn't the only one involved and it's really a team win. The issue is that the media likes to have one winner and she was it. It's another version of the media dumbing down science coverage.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#303I 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
No, it's a legit question. Before I read this article I heard mention of a new picture of a black hole, and I was wondering how it was different from previous pictures.
My understanding now is that this is the first time we've observed one accurately enough to get a picture of the Einstein ring around a black hole. And even there, it's heavily reconstructed using machine learning, which I wouldn't call a "photo", more of a "AI artist rendition".
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
>large diameters due to the inverse relationship between angular resolution and telescope diameter. Not trained in this field, but this reads like a certain mistype. Shouldn't resolution increase with telescope diameter?
No. Angular resolution is essentially the angular distance between two points that are still resolved as separate points. So if your resolution increases, angular resolution decreases, because you can resolve two points that are closer together.
Thanks. I read the Wiki on the matter; should have gone straight there instead of asking. After understanding what it is, angular resolution does make perfect sense a term, but at first glance was certainly a bit counterintuitive.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#305Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…
> This is what makes me somewhat feel that this focus on her is not quite fair. Thought experiment: if you saw an article titled "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would you be commenting on how unfair it is to single him out? After all, he just designed the thing, a huge team of people built the software and the hardware that actually made it possible.
I would, it's just like Steve Jobs being a* hole while taking credit for everyone's work. In those cases it's a result of hierarchy in this case it's a case of the media looking for a media darling for their story. In either case it's not painting reality correctly. That being said it's not her fault and she should be proud of her accomplishment. It's the media which likes to paint pictures of reality like this, to single out a single person to take credit for what a team of researchers did or what a corporation did.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#306Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…
> This is what makes me somewhat feel that this focus on her is not quite fair. Thought experiment: if you saw an article titled "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would you be commenting on how unfair it is to single him out? After all, he just designed the thing, a huge team of people built the software and the hardware that actually made it possible.
> Thought experiment: if you saw an article titled "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would you be commenting on how unfair it is to single him out?
Yes, and that’s what happens in each of those hyperbolic articles (that are mostly about Jobs, but same thing)
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#307Katie gave a TED talk: https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs
It's a TEDx talk. In this case it's an interesting one by an expert in her field, but TEDx have a lot lower demands for participating, so try to keep the distinction clear.
Does it really matter if its a TEDx or TED talk? It just appears like you're trying to diminish her achievements for literally no gain.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstood. We want any person, women and young girls included, to be able to pursue a career path, if they have even the faintest desire of it, without self-censorship, negative remarks, feeling out of place, their vocation and/or skills being continuously challenged randomly, or having to cope with various forms of harassment. If you build an environment that allow that, women presence in the field surge. An…
Maybe you can help me understand. So how do you explain why there are fewer women in STEM fields in Scandinavia and more in Turkey, Tunesia and United Arab Emirates? Well at least according to the paper "The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Gijsbert Stoet, David C. Geary" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761774171...
Scandinavia has hundreds of years of mostly unbroken history in STEM. It is literally the home of the Nobel prize. It isn't really comparable to nations that have rapidly shifted their workforce and industries more recently.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to me that you are the one emphasizing “biological characteristics”. The article does not. Are you projecting, maybe?
The Ycombinator text doesn't say it, but the link does. I think a lot of the negative reaction in here comes from the way people have started to perceive the narrative created by the media and personal feelings of threat (which is often unfounded). I am all in for getting more people from all backgrounds into Computer & Sciences. I also agree that sometimes it is beneficial to have 'biological characteristics' added…
> The Ycombinator text doesn’t say it, but the link does.
The title of the article as of this moment is, “Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image.” Saying, “the woman behind X” doesn’t emphasize gender any more than saying “the man behind X” does. Again, this is you projecting, perhaps because you think “normal” is male, and thus “woman” is somehow making a statement?
I see nothing in the body of the article that mentions her gender in any way other than using the pronoun “she.” It seems to me that you read an article about a female scientist and projected some kind of ulterior motive on the part of the author, which says a lot more about you than it does about the author.
Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Angular resolution is essentially the angular distance between two points that are still resolved as separate points. So if your resolution increases, angular resolution decreases, because you can resolve two points that are closer together.
Thanks. I read the Wiki on the matter; should have gone straight there instead of asking. After understanding what it is, angular resolution does make perfect sense a term, but at first glance was certainly a bit counterintuitive.
I think the reason it's confusing is that the way that bit in the article is worded does little to imply that you want a LOW angular resolution, and it doesn't directly mention resolution in and of itself (which is understood to have an inverse relationship with angular resolution, as it is directly affected by diameter).
It took me several rereads and reading the comments here to understand that we want low numbers for angular resolution.
I suppose it's fairly obvious for one well-versed in optics, but to the layman (like me) it's initially opaque.