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The Stolen Credit For What Makes Up the Sun
StartsWithABang writes: Sure, it's easy today to look at the Sun and know it's a ball of (mostly) hydrogen, generating energy by combining those protons in a chain into helium through the process of nuclear fusion. But before we even knew that nuclear fusion was possible, we needed to figure out what the Sun was made out of, a more difficult task than you'd imagine. The credit was given to Henry Norris Russell (of Hertzsprung-Russell diagram fame), but he completely stole the work from a woman you never heard of: his student, Cecilia Payne, after discouraging her from publishing her work on the subject four years prior.
She made an important scientific breakthrough.
In my opinion, thats very sexy. 10/10, five stars.
I know how it sounds to complain that your one submission (out of the many /. receives) didn't get accepted, but I've tried submitting this recent scientific discovery (published in Nature Chemistry) a few times. IMO it's perfect material for Slashdot: a interesting new hypothesis (about a supposedly "well-understood" reaction) put to the test via regularly evolving experiments and apparatuses. And it was even largely funded through Youtube viewers (who the lead scientist thanks in the paper) and documented with (at least one) well-done video.
/. never ran it. I can't help but think that part of the problem is that the scientist is Dr. Phil Mason, aka thunderf00t, who is known for his vids that expose Atheism+ and anti-Gamergate types as fools. Think about the lousy submissions that do often make it on the front page, especially those that push an agenda.
But
This is why things like Gamergate (and Slashdot's atrocious coverage of it) matter, even if you yourself don't personally care about videogames; it is a fight against neo-puritans who want to filter ALL types of content (not just games, comics, music, movies, etc) you're allowed to see, and refuse to acknowledge the work of those who don't buy into the "narrative."
P.S. Clearly I'm biased, so if any of you think that my article submission is unworthy for some other reason, let me know (seriously).
Because even after Russell gave her credit for showing this first, people still credited him with the discovery.
So this story doesn't contradict that narrative that people in the early 20th C were sexist and unfair to the achievements of women. But it also shows that not all men fit this mold. So it's good news for human nature; it means most of us have caught with the best of us from a hundred years ago.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's actually a bit of a problem. There are lots of stories about how women get screwed over for credit for scientific discoveries. They do, of course, but so do male students. So did whoever figured out the tungsten light bulb filament in Edison's lab, the guy who came up with the rounded corners on the iPhone, and the intern who actually put together that proposal your boss presented last week.
When you look into this particular case a bit, it seems like Russell actually acted pretty well.
It took all her years of graduate research and effort, and four additional years, and finally someone with the stature Russell agreeing with her, to overturn the consensus that believed her conclusions were wrong.
If her supervisor hadn't have been Russell, it would have taken longer. And it would have taken much much longer if there had been anyone with a strong vested interest in her being wrong, say a political agenda depending on sun composition or many scientists trying to maintain a funding source to study sun composition.
That is the reality of science then, and now.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.