A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
She was on one of the teams that did if I remember correctly. I believe they split up into three teams and developed algorithms independently from one another. What surprised everyone was when they came back, all three teams had more or less the same image. It’s been a while so I may be wrong on some details. But it wasn’t just her is my point.
The media loves to make single people heroes because it's easier to sell.
I think in reality, nobody makes anything alone.
It's the hero myth that came to life at the time of Beethoven, of a misunderstood genius. Yes that guy was pretty good at what he did, but it was simply that he got progressively deaf and couldn't socialize with people anymore.
From that to marvel movies stereotype of one man prodigy and media idolizing individuals with sob stories.
Look at Nobel prizes in science, they're often multiple names, and behind each names there's countless decades of graduate students contributions and their teams.
It's even older: The myth of individual excellence is at least as old as the phenomenon of a distinct class of a warrior aristocracy. All throughout history, you'll see the elite (as most historians and poets were, because a peasant working for subsistence doesn't have the time to write deep musings about that time he got conscripted for war and stood in a line with all the other common peasants) writing of this or that great general or warrior, despite most of just about everything being done by groups.
You might know about the great heroes of the Iliad, excelling in battle by taking down a key figure of the opposing side, but most people probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the mass of "common" infantry on either side, let alone about the servants carrying the hoplites' stuff.
You might find a lot of medieval works focused on the glory and honor of a knight, but the (comparatively) poor spear-and-shield conscripts receive attention mostly in official documents detailing the way their army was to be raised (see the section "Ninth-Century Rohirrim" here).
Even when thinking about heavy cavalry charges, for the longest time I never gave much thought to the value of coordinated cohesion between them. The knights' charge is still a group effort, where an isolated warrior - great hero or not - would be doomed. And while we may be aware that knights had a squire, the rest of the retinue wouldn't be clear to everyone:
Clifford Rogers notes one (fictional and lavish, but not outrageous) war party “suitable for a baron or banneret” included a chaplain, three heralds, four trumpeters, two drummers, four pages, two varlets (that is, servants for the pages), two cooks, a forager, a farrier, an armorer, twelve more serving men (with horses, presumably both as combatants and as servants), and a majordomo to manage them all – in addition to the one lord, three knights and nine esquires (C. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives through History: the Middle Ages (2007), 28-9).
(Citation copied from this entry of the same blog as before)
Ever since there has been an elite with the leisure to write and document, served by a lower class who didn't, there has been a tendency to emphasise these elites' individual value and omit the group effort of all the invisible people contributing to that value.
I don't know if that is the cultural inspiration for the modern trend of focusing on single individuals or simply a symptom of a similar cause, but there is a certain resemblance that I suspect isn't pure coincidence.
She was even quote vocal about it not just being her work at the time
Cute woman doing cool science stuff is a more engaging story though
That doesn't mean she was not important, just that she's modest. Good for her and her team!
For the number of times women were straight up erased from their scientific achievements I think we can keep choosing them to represent the team for a bit.
This. Men got so angry when this story dropped and took personal offense to the fact a woman did something important and valuable. The amount of times women have had their work stolen and taken credit for by some bro far outweighs the recognition.
Or maybe attribute everyone equally - regardless of gender / sex, since that doesn't matter to what they do? You don't fix injustice with more injustice by skipping the contributions of other teams and only singleing her out.
Science is teamwork, but the contribution of different team members is usually not all the same. There's no way for us to know who did most of the important work. We have to put trust in the team that they chose their representative fairly.
You replied to the person explaining this and ignored all of it - she was one out of 3 teams, each using different methods to arrive at the same conclusion. They simply made a photo of her when she got a result and was excited. They didn't "choose a representative". She said "everyone deserves the credit". So why are you pushing this, instead of saying "all the teams deserve credit and this is a cool photo"?
I do think the other teams deserve credit as well, just like her team does. I thought it was discussed whether it was right for her to represent her team.
Also, the fact that there were 3 teams doesn't mean we cannot celebrate the happiness of one of their leaders.
I'm fine with this.
As long as the team gets recognition in the more formal documents then let the media have whoever they'd like.
It's like doing set up for a show. Let the headliner be the focus but acknowledging the people who made it happen is really nice.
Definitely, I've not heard of any shenanigans with their paper. So they still get credit. It's just not a media headline.
It's almost never just one person, science is teamwork, but that doesn't mean she's not an excellent scientist and project leader worthy of the buzz surrounding her research. Let's let her have the spotlight she deserves.
This is her youtube channel. If you haven't read the paper on this algorithm, I think you can get a good intuitive understanding by watching the two videos she has on there from (what looks like) her thesis, and I think it becomes clear why she was selected to lead this project.
Specifically, these two videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGvPinTJUs
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NhQ7WkbHms
So, consider that these two videos are basically the "one-dimensional" solution, or one pin-hole camera example. In the approach that her and her team to image the black hole, they used many, many radio antennas', all acting in concert in a not-too different version of what she did her for the work on her YT channel.
too bad - that you leached on your senior collaborators who did ALL and every intellectual part of the project - all for your credit; you are what I call an instagram scientist - too bad for science that such people who do any third-rate cheating act for publicity - like Katie Bouman exists @JosephDT
Seems like somebody is unhappy with her being chosen
Gotta love misogyny
At the same time the media kinda picked her out as the face of this project when there were many other people involved. I think she even said as much.
Yeah and IIRC the dude the Internet misogynists decided was responsible for most of the code said ‘Shut up everyone I did some leg work, but she did the heavy lifting.’ Plus he’s queer or something else which would have had those fuckers in shambles had they known.
Yeah it's cool but where meme?
This is a science community, we work on the Dawkins definition of meme.
The vast majority of posts on this community are internet memes that don't fit that definition.
Wait, do you mean the definition of the community or Dawkins' meme definition?
How come they don't?
When speaking of memes, most people think of internet memes. The likes of which this and every other meme community is full of. That's not what Dawkins means by a meme. What he means by it is a cultural analog to genes. A trait that passes from person to person as an idea or behavior. Shaking hands would an example of such meme.
Internet meme on the other hand generally comes in the form of a picture which is funny, ironic or relateable.
Ideas more broadly = information
Just about any information that self-replicates it using humans, could be considered a meme.
Yes, but it's still also a meme in the Dawkins' sense of the word, isn't it? Or would it be classified as a memetic complex? I think it's probably simple enough to be cathegorised as a meme.
Emotion < Function
Her happiness is contagious!
Dude in the back is looking at the result with the same intensity as a teenager seeing boobs for the first time.
That dude's not even looking at the computer screen. I give even odds that what he's looking at on his phone is boobs.
You've never done this?
Back in my day that was called the Kubrick Tilt
Damn kids and their Chinese cartoons
Kubrick stare
You.
Are.
Late.
(man's got the best teeth in two solar systems)
Yooo is that the train guy? I fucking love that man's soul and will die protecting him like some feudal lord.