From Watson's own comments in the book The Double Helix, I disagree. Everyone involved showed pronounced disrespect for Franklin purely because she was a woman, their criticisms of her amount to just that. It's quite a trip to read, as some of the things he writes just seems so unbelievable. Their main criticism seems to be again and again that she's ugly, W and C were pretty damn ugly too...
They wouldn't have screwed her over at all if her boss hadn't been so antagonistic to her, and that seemed based purely on sex, as all his comments seemed to bemoan her as a feminist. Although I agree with your main preposition, this case seems pretty clear-cut.
Because the moders are oversensitive wuses? Although your language is slightly inflammatory, exactly what Franklin knew is widely debated, and you are totally correct in pointing this out. No one knows exactly how much of the structure she had elucidated, and how much of her suppositions were given to her competitors. You were marked as a troll because the moders didn't agree with your point of view. Hopefully some metamoders will see their comments.....
It might be helpful in the future to write in a calmer voice, however, then they have no excuse.
I'm sure that Franklin realized this, that although she was close, as were others, she was not the first, and this is why she didn't hold a grudge. However, she has, for many reasons, evolved into a main-stream horror story for current female scientists. I think that we see what happened to her, stick up for her, and overestimate her contributions because we want to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to us.
Although they deserve credit for their breakthrough, they're still sexist, racist, pompous jackasses.... maybe that's part of the Rosalin myth as well.
Franklin was responsible for collecting the data that the discovery came from (which was used without her knowledge and consent) but it was Watson and Crick who first had the idea of the double spiral, rather than any other combination. However, with so many strong research groups working on the same problem, intermediate steps were discovered by other researchers. W & C get all the credit because they found the final piece(s).
Franklin's data was given to W & C by her boss, the Institution that she worked for owned it, not her. Since she died before the Nobel prize was awarded for this research, and the prize is not awarded posthumously, no one knows if she would have received equal credit or not.
There are very few fruits of the world experts, I'm very glad that you're one of them. Tell me what part of a lilikoi you eat and I'll give you a cookie!
For biology it does. We spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours attempting to get simple 'yes' and 'no' answers from genetics experiments that this could tell us rather quickly. Discovering what genes an enzyme or messenger activates currently takes months or years of work, and is crucial for agricultural and human health research.
Secondly, why use computers to model what you can do in a test tube? http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/about.htm
The ebola virus is so damn huge it shouldn't be infecting anything! There's also those cases of asian avian influenza, where contact with chickens has killed several.
The problem with the chip is that it doesn't seem to have any defenses, so if a virus is introduced into the broth, it destroys the DNA "software", uses the enzyme "hardware" to make copies regardless of the originating species. Then, if it's a human virus, couldn't it then infect a human?
Although possibly a joke, your comment is a rational concern, as such a thing *could* be possible. The answer rather depends on the intelligence of the creators. Viruses are species-specific, they can only recognize only a very limited type of cell surfaces to infect. Since there will prolly be no cell involved in the computer, most viruses should be able to infect if introduced into the environment, as there would be absolutely no biological resistance. However, to jump to humans, it would have to a human virus capable of infection. If steps were taken to ensure that human-type viri could not infect the chip, as will prolly be invented in the decades before bio chip functionality, then there should be no problem. I wonder if the FDA would be allowed to regulate such a device....
If we ever have cell-based chips, imagine when your computer develops a case of cancer.....
As more and more information becomes purely digital, data loss is going to be increasingly disastrous in people's lives. A computer crash could erase several years of scientific research data, the letters you treasure from late family members, all of your personal phone and e-mail contacts, top this off by the stress and frustration, and you can have a major disaster. Sure, you can blame them for not backing up, but there's very few of us who haven't suffered a similar accident.
If you've ever seen someone lose a term paper, multiply that intensity by several times and you can understand how suddenly a tech support person needs to switch to being a counselor, and since many can't do both jobs, it's really good to have someone else on hand. A suicide counselor may be a bit of overkill, but having someone trained at handling very upset and stressed individuals is a really good idea. This is the wave of the future.....
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Boy would I appreciate having the opportunity.
They wouldn't have screwed her over at all if her boss hadn't been so antagonistic to her, and that seemed based purely on sex, as all his comments seemed to bemoan her as a feminist. Although I agree with your main preposition, this case seems pretty clear-cut.
It might be helpful in the future to write in a calmer voice, however, then they have no excuse.
Although they deserve credit for their breakthrough, they're still sexist, racist, pompous jackasses.... maybe that's part of the Rosalin myth as well.
Franklin's data was given to W & C by her boss, the Institution that she worked for owned it, not her. Since she died before the Nobel prize was awarded for this research, and the prize is not awarded posthumously, no one knows if she would have received equal credit or not.
There are very few fruits of the world experts, I'm very glad that you're one of them. Tell me what part of a lilikoi you eat and I'll give you a cookie!
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030303/story3. html
Secondly, why use computers to model what you can do in a test tube?
http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/about.htm
The problem with the chip is that it doesn't seem to have any defenses, so if a virus is introduced into the broth, it destroys the DNA "software", uses the enzyme "hardware" to make copies regardless of the originating species. Then, if it's a human virus, couldn't it then infect a human?
Although possibly a joke, your comment is a rational concern, as such a thing *could* be possible. The answer rather depends on the intelligence of the creators. Viruses are species-specific, they can only recognize only a very limited type of cell surfaces to infect. Since there will prolly be no cell involved in the computer, most viruses should be able to infect if introduced into the environment, as there would be absolutely no biological resistance. However, to jump to humans, it would have to a human virus capable of infection.
If steps were taken to ensure that human-type viri could not infect the chip, as will prolly be invented in the decades before bio chip functionality, then there should be no problem. I wonder if the FDA would be allowed to regulate such a device....
If we ever have cell-based chips, imagine when your computer develops a case of cancer.....
If you've ever seen someone lose a term paper, multiply that intensity by several times and you can understand how suddenly a tech support person needs to switch to being a counselor, and since many can't do both jobs, it's really good to have someone else on hand. A suicide counselor may be a bit of overkill, but having someone trained at handling very upset and stressed individuals is a really good idea. This is the wave of the future.....