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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

#71

Post by underlipton »

lolinder wrote: post #56
underlipton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, it's the people who insist that IQ must be the sole example of a physiological characteristic that has no genetic component who feel threatened by the science. To be clear, I fiercely oppose racism in all forms, but the battle should be up against the idea that there's some inherent value in IQ scores, not against the idea that genes play a role in the scores.

IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence, which is itself a phenomenon that rests on top of cognition, which rests on top of consciousness, which somehow (we're not sure how) rests on top of the physiology of the nervous system. There may well be a genetic component to that physiology, but it's an unscientific assumption that that component is the deciding factor in race-level differences in measures of IQ. It's also not the sole example to commonly fall to this fallacy. Polygenic traits are not so simple.

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

#72

Post by anonymouskimmer »

smegger001 wrote: post #36
_Wintermute wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

its almost like all modern scinece is team efforts that only the sufficiently tenured get credit for.

This is the really important part. The debates about Franklin, Wilkins, Watson and Crick is like a debate about which A-list movie stars deserve the higher paycheck. Yeah, sure, the hagiography of particular individuals will motivate some people below them to dream big, but it's also demotivating to others who know they'll never be recognized as elite.

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

#73

Post by anonymouskimmer »

mihaic wrote: post #13
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.

Who wasn't sociable? This just sounds like a clash of personalities, not a lack of sociality.

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

#74

Post by lolinder »

underlipton wrote: post #71
lolinder wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the people who insist that IQ must be the sole example of a physiological characteristic that has no genetic component who feel threatened by the science. To be clear, I fiercely oppose racism in all forms, but the battle should be up against the idea that there's some inherent value in IQ scores, not against the idea that genes play a role in the scores.

IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence, which is itself a phenomenon that rests on top of cognition, which rests on top of consciousness, which somehow (we're not sure how) rests on top of the physiology of the nervous system. There may well be a genetic component to that physiology, but it's an unscientific assumption that that component is the deciding factor in race-level differenc…

> IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence, which is itself a phenomenon that rests on top of cognition, which rests on top of consciousness, which somehow (we're not sure how) rests on top of the physiology of the nervous system.

So... it's fundamentally physiological. We just don't know the details of how the physiology gives rise to conscious thought.

> that component is the deciding factor in race-level differences in measures of IQ

I never said that it's the deciding factor and most people don't. What irks me is when people discount it as being a factor at all. Everything in biology is a complex interaction of genetics and environment, and IQ is no different.

> IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence

See, this is exactly my point—your line of argument does more to support racist claims than it does to dethrone them. You're arguing a position that cannot be seriously defended while giving credence to a claim that is fundamentally flawed. The idea that there is some discrete quantity called "intelligence" that can be measured by a test and that causes some people to be more successful (whatever that means) than others is a far more vulnerable position to attack than the idea that our consciousness is influenced by our physiology, and I'm not sure why you picked that windmill to tilt at.

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

#75

Post by 908B64B197 »

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…

> is not nearly as important as is the question of why the question of who discovered DNA's structure is significant.

I feel there's a push now to go find people of the right race or gender that were adjacent to scientific achievement and somewhat exaggerate their contributions or their importance. Like Ada Lovelace or Katherine Johnson. There's even a British government employee who decided to write 1000+ wikipedia pages for early career scientists of the same gender as her [0].

I don't know how this trend is going to look back in retrospect, because to me this could have the side effect of reinforcing impostor syndrome for people of the same demographics.

> how can the father of genetic science be wrong about the influence of genetics on society?

What does Gregor Mendel has to do with this?

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/17/jess-wad...

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

#76

Post by mightyham »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #55
mightyham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That only matters if IQ is a measure of something that matters. There are several arguments which suggest it's not. 1. How good someone is at taking a test ≠ intelligence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... 2. The IQ test may have been specifically designed to be difficult for certain populations, which were comparatively less educated. And those populations are still less educated today.…

I find the suggestion that IQ was designed to be racist highly unlikely considering that many studies have shown Asians to have higher average IQs than Europeans. Even in regards to SAT testing, Chinese American immigrants are extraordinarily over represented in upper percentiles.

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

#77

Post by saghm »

notsosec wrote: post #51
phs318u wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re referring to Watson’s 2007 claim that Africa is unlikely to succeed n part because of the inhabitants’ inferior intelligence, as the “truth” he is speaking to “power” perhaps it is you who are biased.

Power in the sense he got completely cancelled in the west for saying things that are not considered taboo in other parts of the world.

I think most people consider "truth" to require a higher threshold than "some people believe it somewhere".

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

#78

Post by saghm »

mightyham wrote: post #76
pazimzadeh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only matters if IQ is a measure of something that matters. There are several arguments which suggest it's not. 1. How good someone is at taking a test ≠ intelligence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... 2. The IQ test may have been specifically designed to be difficult for certain populations, which were comparatively less educated. And those populations are still less educated today.…

I find the suggestion that IQ was designed to be racist highly unlikely considering that many studies have shown Asians to have higher average IQs than Europeans. Even in regards to SAT testing, Chinese American immigrants are extraordinarily over represented in upper percentiles.

Are you saying you don't think it's likely for the test to be designed to make a certain group perform worse than another as long as some groups outside either of those score better than the group that designed the test? Or that if it was actively designed to make one group perform worse than the one who designed the test, it's not racist because some third group scored even better? Neither of those claims sound particularly persuasive to me

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

#79

Post by dudeinjapan »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #55
mightyham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That only matters if IQ is a measure of something that matters. There are several arguments which suggest it's not. 1. How good someone is at taking a test ≠ intelligence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... 2. The IQ test may have been specifically designed to be difficult for certain populations, which were comparatively less educated. And those populations are still less educated today.…

The fact that Europeans "specifically designed" a racist test to make all other races look dumb, but then failed when Asians took it, may in-and-of-itself be an indicator of the relative intelligence of the races.

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

#80

Post by unmole »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #67
khazhoux wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> erasure of women Is there any reason to believe that they would have been more generous in giving credit had the work been from a man? And are there not dozens of other researchers who Watson and Crick drew inspiration and results from, who are not listed on the Nobel Prize?

> Is there any reason to believe that they would have been more generous in giving credit had the work been from a man? The what-ifs of one specific notable instance doesn't really matter. This is merely being used for illustrative purposes. It is also the case that it is not just women who are denied credit, but until relatively recently it was common practice to not even think to give equal credit to women. > And a…

> This is merely being used for illustrative purposes.

Stated more cynically, it's being used to craft a narrative in support of an agenda.

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