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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

#411

Post by themarkn »

monksy wrote: post #377
soVeryTired wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to hear her praise "her team" (her team is a subset of people in the whole project) Although, I don't think she has enough experience to realize that it's a good thing to do. She did that in the TED talk. And in the article linked above. And basically everywhere else she's spoken.

Oh.. I had no idea. That's awesome. I made the assumption that she did the academic thing which is "i did this" signed advisor. The assumption was based on the focus of the articles. (editorial bias)

No need to avoid your own responsibility and bias in making that assumption. It's not accurate to blame it on the media coverage alone. Strikes me as more like confirmation bias around what your expectations are for academics, women, or both.

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

#412

Post by themarkn »

Not_a_pizza wrote: post #409
ikeyany wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. That said, if Katie was a man, her story would not be as groundbreaking in a social context, and thus she would not be as celebrated.

It's an asinine premise to say that the sex or race of a person makes an accomplishment more or less praiseworthy. If you really believe all are created equal, then you should be willing to praise equally for the same accomplishment regardless. If you don't, then what you are stating is that a sex or race is normally quite incompetent at such things and that it had to be a greater effort. Individuals do have differen…

Social, historical, and cultural factors undoubtedly make the level of effort required to be successful as a woman in tech or science spaces higher than the level of effort a man has to make for the same level of success (if you could control everything else). This can be true without any derogatory implication about the inherent capabilities of women generally. That you can't tell the difference astonishes me.

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

#413

Post by rhizome »

realradicalwash wrote: post #344
victor106 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "But Dr Bouman, ...insisted the team that helped her deserves equal credit."

my criticism is not aimed at her at all - but at the media. and yes, she emphasised this elsewhere, too, which imv shows what a great and humble person she is.

interacting with the outside world must be exhausting with its naturally undeconstructed appearance and operation.

my criticism is not...

i mean, is it even really "your criticism?" why aren't you giving credit to others who are speculating the same issues? you're basically saying you're the first person to ever think this, did you even search for others or are you content in helping them to toil in obscurity?

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

#414

Post by wklauss »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #345
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, absolutely. I've made comments before to the effect of: I cringe hard enough to actually feel physical discomfort every time a headline refers to a team effort of SpaceX as "Elon Musk's Rocket."

Ok, how about "Turing: the genius that cracked the ENIGMA code"?

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

#416

Post by roguecoder »

ikeyany wrote: post #321
streb-lo wrote: post #313

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

Absolutely not. That said, if Katie was a man, her story would not be as groundbreaking in a social context, and thus she would not be as celebrated.

We celebrated Mohawk NASA dude just as much as she’s being celebrated. Maybe we just like unabashedly enthusiastic engineers.

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

#417

Post by wklauss »

MattGrommes wrote: post #302
realradicalwash wrote: post #265

Her 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.

It's not dumbing down science. Is making science relatable to an audience that otherwise would not care much about an image of a black hole. Having a "hero" in a story serves a purpose (many purposes, in this case) and it happens in every single field you can imagine.

Is that sport player really a star os is he/she a star because he has an amazing team that creates the opportunities for him/her to stand out?

Is this law championed by a politician really his/her idea or does he/she have a team of advisors that helped shape it?

Nobody lives in a vacuum. There isn't a single person, dead or alive, that has accomplish anything of importance without the help of others (knowingly or unknowingly, wether directly or indirectly) but at some point you have to take that for granted, to a certain degree, and focus on the figure that drives the enterprise, or makes a new discovery thanks to previous ones, or leads a team, or publish a paper.

It's not media who loves to have a winner, in any case. It's all of us, and the media obliges because it knows that a story with a hero is better told and better heard. It just happens that for some reason, in this case, having a hero seems to be unacceptable for some and I can't quite put my finger on why...

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

#418

Post by roguecoder »

Frost1x wrote: post #188
black_puppydog wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a bit on the scientific field, but in mine (computer vision, which this was also published in) the first author is the "main" author, usually doing most if not all the "ground work", then you have collaborators and co-authors, and finally the supervisors (in the case of the PhD student that she was at the time). It is becoming more common to see papers with "Author1 , Author2 , Author3..." lists, where the…

I've found that CS contributions in academia are often poorly credited (sometimes even entirely neglected) to endeavors not purely executed within CS itself. It's interesting considering how many modern scientific endeavors are dependent on new innovative algorithms, software, and computing techniques in both experimental and theoretical work then its frequently just hand-waved away as "technology." I'm not saying su…

I’ve gotten authorship when I have collaborated on the paper itself (rather than just research: that’s how you get into acknowledgements, same as lab techs, collaborators who didn’t work on this specific paper, etc.)

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

#419

Post by roguecoder »

kaitai wrote: post #334
toomanybeersies wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who didn't realise above, I was being flippant. On a slightly serious note though, I wonder how much productivity is lost in the scientific community due to poorly written and documented code? I've heard stories of 40 year old Fortran code written by long deceased professors that was written to crunch physics numbers or whatever, and when it's come time to modify or add to it, nobody can make head nor tail…

A lot of academic code is also written by students. For instance, I'm working on a project that ends up with code written by 6 masters' students. I'm trying desperately to get them to use Git or some other kind of version control rather than emailing me files, but it's only been partially successful. My last CS class per se was 18 years ago. They don't know (&( ^ about programming -- at least I've been paid to do it…

This makes me wonder if universities could employ a bootcamp-like curriculum, with lots of feedback, collaboration and unit tests, and make it available for students in these disciplines. Like how many schools have everyone take writing classes.

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

#420

Post by roguecoder »

Frost1x wrote: post #188
black_puppydog wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a bit on the scientific field, but in mine (computer vision, which this was also published in) the first author is the "main" author, usually doing most if not all the "ground work", then you have collaborators and co-authors, and finally the supervisors (in the case of the PhD student that she was at the time). It is becoming more common to see papers with "Author1 , Author2 , Author3..." lists, where the…

I've found that CS contributions in academia are often poorly credited (sometimes even entirely neglected) to endeavors not purely executed within CS itself. It's interesting considering how many modern scientific endeavors are dependent on new innovative algorithms, software, and computing techniques in both experimental and theoretical work then its frequently just hand-waved away as "technology." I'm not saying su…

In this case she is a Computer Scientist, so the CS contributions are the first author on the paper.
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