Despite what Watson said, Rosalind Franklin understood structure of DNA first
65 points by gumby 3 hours ago | 10 comments
bondarchuk 54 minutes ago
So did Franklin provably realize the double-helix structure of DNA first or not? A lot of beating about the bush here but the article stops just short of actually explicitly making the claim it's working so hard to imply, AFAICT...
reply(edit: should note the HN submission title (at present "Despite what Watson said, Rosalind Franklin understood structure of DNA first") does not actually occur in TFA)
gumby 12 minutes ago
The original title was too long and then when I considered how to edit it I realized that the original title was too obscure for anyone not steeped in that particular literature (“photo 51”)
replykraken_cult 15 minutes ago
[flagged]
replyajross 11 minutes ago
Is genuine curiosity about scientific history inherently "retconning"? Would you have said that if the dispute was between Watson and some other dude?
replyI mean, yes, there are people who push this attribution because of identity reasons. Rejecting it for the same reasons is at least as bad, no?
kraken_cult 6 minutes ago
Sure, and I'm sure there are countless people through history, lab techs, post docs, the scribe of Machiavelli, the person who washed da Vinci's shirts who made contributions - maybe major. Hell, stuff I bring up at work now will somehow make it in to our staff meeting as coming from the CEO when it was a conversation him and I had.
replyThe questions is, why, there's clearly an obsession around it. And I honestly doubt if Rosalind Franklin we wouldn't be having the conversation, can you see any indicator to the contrary?
howunfortunate 2 hours ago
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered
replyTacticalCoder 10 minutes ago
> Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered
replyYup. We all know the microscope, telescope, train, plane, internal combustion engine, antibiotics, vaccines, etc. were all developed in Africa. Let the truth come out!
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
It seems like there are several different parts to the discovery of the "structure of DNA" and different people contributed.
1. DNA is helical
2. DNA is a double helix
3. The ACGT copying mechanism
Part 1 was Franklin and Wilkins. Part 3 was Watson and Crick. Part 2 is the part under debate, to what degree was the double helix clear from just Franklin's imaging?
But really, how much does it matter? It seems like the four of them each contributed a lot. The Nobel prize only went to the other three, in large part because Franklin died before it was given out.