by Feuilles_Mortes on 4/25/23, 6:27 PM with 136 comments
by pazimzadeh on 4/25/23, 7:38 PM
That's not the lore as I learned it. The lore is that Franklin sat on the data for months before analyzing it (she wanted to collect more data). Then W+C visited her lab and saw the data, but did not instantly understand it. Instead, the lore is that they figured out the structure of the DNA through a combination of going on daily walks, playing with models, and taking LSD.
It is Linus Pauling who would have been able to instantly figure out the structure of DNA by glancing at Photograph 51. His initial theory had been that the phosphates were on the inside of the structure, which in hindsight would never work because the negative charges would repel each other.
Source: Don't remember the primary source, but we covered it in Martin Stranathan's AP Bio class in high school
by failingslowly on 4/26/23, 11:13 AM
It's telling that the controversy only surrounds Franklin's contributions, not Wilkins', presumably because of her gender and the need to promote women's historical contribution to science. I understand the desire to do that, as the theory goes that girls can only be interested in science if they know of women who have excelled previously. (I'm not sure I completely buy this, but I'm not about to die on that hill.)
However, I'm glad this article was published, as it gives some balance to what has become (as per) a deeply biased and divisive discussion, mostly, I have to say, by the myth-making and narratives of one side.
To add a personal anecdote, I'll note that my son was straight-up taught (by his female science teacher) that Watson and Crick did not discover the structure of DNA but stole it from Franklin. I'm still not sure I've completely disabused him of this idea.
by slibhb on 4/25/23, 7:54 PM
I don't think this is what Watson wrote in The Double Helix. He wrote that Crick, with his background in math and physics, could understand the image produced by Franklin but that he -- Watson -- could not.
Watson does write that Franklin thought DNA wasn't helical. The linked article provides an interesting explanation for why she thought that (at least at one time). As far as I can tell, that backs up Watson's narrative rather than undermining it.
One interesting takeaway from The Double Helix was that Watson and Crick cracked the problem with guess-and-check model building (the article mentions this). Sure, they had some vague idea that DNA was a helix and that A-T, C-G relatinoship, but they basically played with tinker toys until they got something that looked good. Watson claims that they decided on a double helix because of his intuition that "in biology, important things occur in pairs".
by DoreenMichele on 4/26/23, 6:20 AM
This is news to me. I've heard before that supposedly her work was "stolen" by men in the field. I have always thought it more likely that she thought she needed more evidence or something like that. Women seem to have trouble getting good mentors and, like Vinny in My Cousin Vinny, may be weak when it comes to procedure -- aka the culture of the appropriate way to do things and get it taken seriously, etc.
Knowing she died so young makes me think this is largely why she "lacked adequate recognition" in the eyes of people crying sexism. I doubt that. I've heard of her and heard hand-wavy versions of how some guy stole from her or whatever but never looked into it because such stories tend to be framed in a way that frequently strikes me as biased and counterproductive as a woman trying to find my own path forward.
Women do face challenges. My opinions as to what those challenges are tend to differ from popular framing.
And this section fits more with my view of such things:
Franklin did not succeed, partly because she was working on her own without a peer with whom to swap ideas. She was also excluded from the world of informal exchanges in which Watson and Crick were immersed.
by jeffreyrogers on 4/25/23, 10:43 PM
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/An-obituary-written-by-R...
by maire on 4/25/23, 10:52 PM
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/rosalind-franklin-lega...
My take away was that Rosalind Franklin did support the Watson Crick paper but that there was some conflict leading up to the paper. She did not seem to think her ideas were stolen.
It did not help that after Franklin died - Watson wrote a hit piece on Franklin. I think that is what caused people to question if Watson was above board while Franklin was alive.
by AlbertCory on 4/26/23, 12:18 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9TUTf4T7cI
what I recall him saying was nothing about Jewishness or women: he says, I think I remember, that Franklin "did not see faces," i.e. he thought she was partially autistic. (go to 35:00 in the talk)
At the time, he was researching the heritability of autism.
That was his explanation for why she didn't enjoy talking to people, especially those who were her rivals.
by photochemsyn on 4/25/23, 8:26 PM
> "Key conclusions from Erwin Chargaff's work are now known as Chargaff's rules. The first and best known achievement was to show that in natural DNA the number of guanine units equals the number of cytosine units and the number of adenine units equals the number of thymine units."
> "The second of Chargaff's rules is that the composition of DNA varies from one species to another, in particular in the relative amounts of A, G, T, and C bases. Such evidence of molecular diversity, which had been presumed absent from DNA, made DNA a more credible candidate for the genetic material than protein."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Chargaff#Chargaff's_rule...
Not to distract from Rosalind Franklin's contributions, but if anyone is looking for a female role model in molecular biology and biochemistry with a major influence and a long career, Barbara McClintock is probably at or near the top of that list:
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/barbara-mcclintock...
by phs318u on 4/26/23, 2:15 AM
by gregwebs on 4/26/23, 10:10 AM
> Rosalind Franklin has been reduced to the “wronged heroine” of the double helix22,23. She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure.
by hatsune on 5/5/23, 4:36 AM
by KevSlater on 4/26/23, 12:47 AM
by stanwesley on 4/26/23, 2:03 AM
by underlipton on 4/25/23, 10:52 PM
There is another aspect of this significance, however, in the way that James Watson's impropriety - in his work, and in his telling of the story of his work - reflects on, and is reflected by, his later racist and sexist intellectual misadventures. The myth of a singular - well, dual - genius who moves humanity forward lends credence to his bigotry - how can the father of genetic science be wrong about the influence of genetics on society? - while the truth dashes that credibility (without necessarily undoing the significance of his actual contributions). And it is a controversy that gets re-litigated perennially not because people truly care that much about the discovery or discovers, but because our understanding of these events underpin beliefs, our understanding of the world, that are as sharply relevant today as a shard of glass.
To retreat to attempting an exhaustive reconstruction of events might be comfortable, but it is also a bit dangerous - it assumes a totality of understanding that may be found wanting - and, more importantly, it misses the core of why the controversy exists in the first place. Peer esteem may be foremost on an academic's mind, but we've long left the ivory tower on this one.