
Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole - malmaud
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/13/18308652/katie-bouman-black-hole-science-internet
======
matt4077
Reposting my comment from another story that didn’t get traction (edit: thar
was quickly flagged off the front page, as this one is now as well):

It should be noted that this community here was among the worst in this
regard.

This isn’t about measuring the exact contribution she may or may not have made
to the project. It’s that there are limitless stories of „meet the man behind
<x>“ where that question just never crosses anyone’s mind. See "The Man Behind
Windows PowerShell"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15250349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15250349)

Yet for her
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086)),
the discussion was easily dominated by attempts to tear her down, a few
defenders, and entirely transparent attempts to differentiate her case from
all the others that avoid the obvious reason.

~~~
ALittleLight
I'm far from an expert on either of these topics but just looking at your
links, one main difference is that the "man behind Windows PowerShell" was the
Chief Architect of the project. Katie Bouman (per a ten second Google search)
seems to have been a contributor to the black hole project.

When I looked at the PowerShell thread, the top five threads were people
hating on PowerShell, followed by one person who liked it. In general, I think
comments tend to be biased towards people with a disagreement with the main
article. If you agreed with it entirely, you'd just upvote and move on. If
you're leaving a comment you probably have an objection or qualification you
want to make. In the PowerShell example the qualification was how much people
hate PowerShell. In the Bouman example it's arguing over the phrase "woman
behind".

Here's a counter example about "The woman behind two men and a truck" [1].
None of the top level comments seem to be complaining about her not being the
only one to contribute to the company etcetera. As far as I can tell with a
bit of research, she really is the woman behind the company (the founder), the
PowerShell guy really was the Chief Architect, and Bouman really was a
contributor but not the lead or central figure behind the black hole effort.
So, I'm not persuaded this is evidence of a misogynistic attitude at
HackerNews. I think it can be true that women face sexist attitudes in the
sciences, that mean people are being mean to Bouman online, and that Bouman
can be incorrectly described as the "woman behind black hole pictures".

1 -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164620)

~~~
fzeroracer
As a thought experiment, if you believe Bouman can't be described as 'the
woman behind the black hole pictures', then can you describe for me what
contributions she made?

~~~
ALittleLight
As I mentioned I am not especially familiar with Katie Bouman or the black
hole project and everything I'm writing is just from a few seconds of google
searching. Based on that, I would say that Bouman was a scientist,
mathematician, and programmer who worked on the project.

Per Wikipedia

Bouman - She researches computational methods for imaging, and was a member of
the Event Horizon Telescope team that captured the first image of a black hole

Snover - Jeffrey Snover is a Microsoft Technical Fellow, PowerShell Chief
Architect, and the Chief Architect for the Azure Infrastructure and Management
group which includes Azure Stack, System Center and Operations Management
Suite. Snover is the inventor of Windows PowerShell

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Bouman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Bouman)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Snover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Snover)

From these two excerpts alone it sounds more correct to say that Snover was
the "Man behind" PowerShell than Bouman was the "Woman behind" the black hole
pictures.

------
faissaloo
I'm so sick of this MSM/social media fueled gender shit flinging. She herself
never claimed she did all the work, the MSM did.

~~~
daenz
Exactly. This is the media setting the stage for a fight among people and then
reporting on that fight for more revenue. Then acting shocked that the fight
is even happening.

------
wesammikhail
I know I am gonna get down-voted to hell for this but here goes nothing:

Am I the only one who was born and used the internet early enough to
understand how it actually works? It´s like suddenly everyone is talking about
trolls as if it´s some massive internet problem when in actuality trolling is
as old if not older than the internet itself. The mere fact that people are
complaining about trolls is in itself mind-boggling to me.

People are assholes. You give them the ability to be anonymous and they will
take advantage of it. In fact, most of you have probably at one point done
something that would be considered trolling. So why the heck is everyone so
outraged at the existence of trolls? like really?! How thin skinned do you
have to be that some mean comments on the internet aimed to piss you off
actually do work? Man I miss the old days when people didn´t associate their
online @mynameisabcdef with their actual offline worth and self-esteem.

The less you separate your online life from your offline one, the more you´ll
get hurt. Get off the internet, take a walk and if you want to have a proper
discussion, seek a forum where people talk seriously. There web is a much
bigger space than the cesspool that is Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It´s as
if some people live and die by what is said on Twitter these days. In my book
that´s nothing short of insanity.

I get that people want the problem fixed. I really do. But you are up against
human nature. If you think you´re going to beat that by pointing fingers and
getting angry, then you don´t really understand the problem.

She did something amazing and no matter what, no amount of trolls can take
that away from her. Simple as that. And if trolls can actually take that away
from her then what she did was probably not so great after all. Let the work
speak for itself rather than worrying about what some schmuck on twitter said

------
high_derivative
"Highlighting the achievements of a brilliant, enthusiastic scientist does not
diminish the contributions of the other 214 people who worked on the project,
either. "

That is, in my experience, untrue, if it is highlighted in a way that unjustly
lifts one contribution above all others.

Does not tend to make collaborators happy. Since there is no money involved
(as in, no big salary increases), academics (being one myself) are incredibly
petty about these things, and bitter feuds are fought about small points of
recognition.

For example, another female collaborator of hers was actually the one to point
out that Katie Bouman's algorithm was not the one used for the image, as
pointed out by the NYT:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-
blac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black-
hole.html)

~~~
blub
I've read the following in a newspaper article:

"[...]30 of the 200 scientists were responsible for the image processing.
There were four algorithms developed in parallel to transform the telescope
data into pictures, one of them developed by Bouman during her Phd at
MIT[...]"

The gist was that she's a great researcher, but not a hero or the face of the
project, as she was presented.

Frankly, it looks like the media screwed up in their attempt to transform her
into the face of women in science and turned her into a target of harassment.
I've seen e.g. an article from a major publication titled "Without this woman,
there would be no picture of the black hole". She seems to be a very competent
researcher and had an important contribution. Saying that would have been
accurate, fairer and would have prevented the malicious gossip, I assume.

~~~
Mirioron
I mostly feel bad for her. She didn't try to claim that fame, others did it
for her and she's the one to suffer the backlash.

I saw an article with the same title on futurism [0] and didn't really
question it at first. Perhaps there were others who saw similar things, but as
they learned more about the story they felt like they had been lied to.

[0] [https://futurism.com/the-byte/first-black-hole-image-
katie-b...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/first-black-hole-image-katie-bouman)

------
iamdave
I wonder sometimes if writing articles “Trolls did thing trolls are known for
doing” is incidentally giving the trolls exactly what they want.

~~~
matt4077
No, it’s letting them know they stand outside what’s considered polite
company.

Rereading the discussion about her, this community is among those standing to
learn something by considering how she is being treated differently than any
man ever featured in such stories.

~~~
tom_
I find it useful to have a handle on which subjects are currently triggering
outbursts. Makes it easier to spot when some other discussion might be heading
(or, sometimes, being steered...) in the direction of derailment, I think, if
I feel like I have an idea of the current themes.

------
throwawaysea
I'm confused by all the comments here attacking those who viewed this entire
story with skepticism, considering the skeptics were ultimately _correct_. See
[https://twitter.com/SaraIssaoun/status/1116304522660519936](https://twitter.com/SaraIssaoun/status/1116304522660519936)

> There are more of us. Katie's algorithm, despite the media's stance, was not
> used to produce this image. There were three algorithms used and combined to
> form the final image, and a team of 40 scientists part of that aspect of the
> project (including myself and more women).

Katie Bouman's algorithm was not even used in the construction of the final
image. If that's not an indictment of modern journalism, I don't know what is.
Even the New York Times has published a story corroborating all this, and as
far as I can tell they were one of the few journalistic outlets that did not
publish a prior story pushing the narrative of the single female scientist
solving this problem: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-
bouman-blac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black-
hole.html)

> While she led the development of an algorithm to take a picture of a black
> hole, an effort that was the subject of a TED Talk she gave in 2016, her
> colleagues said that technique was not ultimately used to create this
> particular image.

Ultimately, this fiasco is a textbook example of news media and social media
spinning up a manufactured, hyped-up story to push a certain narrative.
Virtually every news outlet was publishing the same story emphasizing how a
singular female scientist was behind this effort. Bouman herself was even
quoted in some of these articles as saying it was a team effort, by the way,
so none of this is her fault. But news media and ideologues on Twitter pushed
a gender-centric narrative nonetheless, and in doing so, overtly politicized
the story.

For example, take a look at the Washington Post's article on this story.
Initially it was titled "Katie Bouman, #womeninstem star, created algorithm
[...]". You can still see this title in Google search results
([https://www.google.com/search?q=katie+bouman%2C+%23womeninst...](https://www.google.com/search?q=katie+bouman%2C+%23womeninstem+star)).
Now the story has been revised to "Katie Bouman helped the world see a black
hole. Fans want ‘a rightful seat in history’ for her."
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/11/katie-
boum...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/11/katie-bouman-
helped-world-see-black-hole-fans-want-rightful-seat-history-her/)

Given how ubiquitous this story was for those 1-2 days, I think it makes sense
that people would also examine the details critically, and also question if
they were the victim of media manipulation pushing some ideological narrative.
And as I stated at the very beginning, they were ultimately correct.

------
EamonnMR
I knew exactly which one it was in particular before clicking. There's a deep
rot in the online culture.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
This isn't "online" culture, it is simply culture. There has always been a
horrible group of folks in culture: What we find acceptable changes over time.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
This kind of horrible is limited to online culture, though. People don't troll
when talking face to face. If they did, everybody would see they were
assholes, and they would suddenly find that nobody wanted to hang out with
them anymore.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
The US constitution declared slaves as 3/5th of a person. Women couldn't do
much without a man until recently. We've tortured folks and the Holocaust was
a thing. The crusades were a thing.

On a lesser note, people gossip. They'll have "private" conversations about
you while they know you can hear. Stop talking to folks because they think you
are lesbian.

People are horrible.

------
malvosenior
Can this not be viewed as a call for the media to more accurately report
stories? I think people are just tired of massive media outlets manufacturing
the news instead of reporting it. This was obviously a team effort but a
single individual got put on a pedestal because it fit with a larger
narrative.

People are mad and tired of it. Why don't we step back and look at the bigger
picture and listen to what people are complaining about instead of just
admonishing them.

~~~
Nasrudith
No because their concerns are transparent misogyny - if they wanted actual
coverage they would shame them with a complete list of contributors and snark
that "an additional kilobyte or printed page isn't that expensive!". Sadly so
many choose to be outraged over irrelevant bullshit instead of something which
remotely matters.

~~~
throwawaysea
Fact-finding is not misogyny. And the facts in this case are that Bouman's
algorithm was not used in the black hole image that is being hailed as a
scientific milestone. She had other contributions here (see
[https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/111651854732747571...](https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/1116518547327475712)
which credits her with writing the testing framework), but what was pitched in
news headlines about her role/contributions was explicitly false. Pointing out
the truth is not misogyny.

~~~
fzeroracer
People pointing out that Andrew Chael was far more important because he had
'850k lines of code written' making her contributions worthless was not
pointing out the truth. It was explicitly about tearing down her
contributions.

~~~
throwawaysea
I agree, that particular argument was meaningless (since lines of code is not
everything) and wrong (since a lot of those 850K lines were data). I agree
some people behind that line of argument might have been looking to tear her
down, and that the impulse to do so may have been rooted in misogyny.

That said, I also think it's not everyone, and that some who were examining
the code base were just on a fact-finding mission given that this story was
seemingly everywhere online and something felt off.

------
grawprog
I feel bad for all the people that have nothing better to do than sit around
and dig into someone's life and harass them because a picture was posted of
them working on a project.

I feel worse for the people they're harassing, but fuck they must have bleak
meaningless lives if they choose to spend their time harassing scientists over
a photograph.

I mean the thought behind it from the actual team was probably something like
'Hey we're getting the image loaded, we should get a picture of this'

That's what it looks like in the caption for the tweet. It mostly looks like
her name's mentioned because she's in the picture. It refers to her as
Researcher.

How is anything about that unreasonable or giving her credit for everything?

Why would people interpret it this way?

I mean i'm pretty the more imporant part of that picture was the image of the
black hole being loaded for the first time.

------
kzcqt
Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the
face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for
saying something that is clearly preposterous.

Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the
poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for
clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved.

Media reports the backlash. They get tons of clicks for that too.

Summary: media wins. Everybody else loses.

~~~
matt4077
Care to find any example among the myriad of „meet the man behind...“ stories
where the same thing happened?

~~~
adventured
Sure, there are several famous examples that everyone is aware of.

Steve Jobs with the iPhone or iPod. Elon Musk with both SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff
Bezos with AWS and Amazon's success generally.

In every thread (or media article) in which those people are given opulent
credit for the thing in question, it's persistently pointed out that in fact
the teams, designers, employees, engineers, leadership, etc. behind those
things deserve enormous credit, while the famous person at the front is
getting the credit as a visionary genius. Why? Because it sells better to put
Bezos on the cover (with his head in a box).

State in an HN thread that Elon Musk founded Tesla sometime, see what response
you get 100% of the time. I've been watching that specific response play out
over and over for the better part of a decade here as one example. Musk
persistently gets given overwhelming credit by the media, and he persistently
gets torn down for it.

You also constantly see it when it comes to team efforts generally to take
this further. For example when NASA and ESA work on something together and
then NASA gets blanket credit. The more famous team will get the overwhelming
credit, because it sells. That last part is what it's all about.

~~~
throwawaysea
While I think it is important to recognize that Jobs/Musk/Bezos all had large
organizations working on things they are often credited with, I think it is
more reasonable to credit them in this way because they were explicitly the
leaders and founders of their companies. They envisioned, created, and led the
organizations that produced all those products.

I don't think that is an apples-to-apples comparison with this story. The
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a collaboration between numerous
organizations (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope#Collab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope#Collaboration))
and it does have a leadership team (see
[https://eventhorizontelescope.org/organization](https://eventhorizontelescope.org/organization)).
But in this story, we did not discuss the leaders of this effort. We discussed
one contributing engineer/scientist who was elevated above the rest, when her
algorithm was not even used in the production of the final image (which is the
underlying scientific milestone that is being recognized here).

I find it bizarre because from all that I've seen, Bouman was not in a
leadership position but was a peer-contributor alongside many others. Her
contributions matter, and are important (as credited by Andrew Chael), but it
is bizarre to recognize her alone and not everyone else who is on equal
footing in terms of their contribution (or even greater footing, for those who
came up with the algorithms that _were_ used for the final image).

