
Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project - mpweiher
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black-hole.html
======
cheez
I think it's unfortunate from two perspectives:

1\. I have zero experience seeing women in STEM treated badly. I'm sure it
exists, but I've never seen it. Exactly the contrary. So whenever I personally
see these articles, I think it's a solution looking for a problem. For
example, see this article:
[https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1095957/Google-news-
gen...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1095957/Google-news-gender-pay-
gap-workers-men-woman)

2\. I'm not sure how much Katie likes to be reduced down to what is between
her legs given the combined years of dedication it took to be able to achieve
the results that the team achieved.

In general, can we please applaud the people and not the identities? It's so
sad to see this approach to celebrating achievements. I don't want my children
to be labelled based on something they have no control over.

A silver lining in this cloud is that "normies" don't really think this way,
it's just the media.

~~~
pm90
> 1\. I have zero experience seeing women in STEM treated badly. I'm sure it
> exists, but I've never seen it. Exactly the contrary. So whenever I
> personally see these articles, I think it's a solution looking for a
> problem.

I don't get this kind of reasoning at all. It really doesn't matter if you
personally have not experienced such kind of behavior, only that we have
reasonable evidence to believe it does. And as journalists have shown over the
past couple of years, abuse of vulnerable women/minorities is a lot more
widespread than what it was earlier believed to be.

~~~
BurningFrog
Why would you believe journalists over STEM people about workplace conditions
in STEM?

Journalists will write whatever sells the most clicks. They're not some kind
of scientists.

~~~
pm90
> Why would you believe journalists over STEM people about workplace
> conditions in STEM?

Because STEM people are doing mostly STEM stuff. They are not actively
investigating workplace conditions. So they only have a limited view of the
entire space of "STEM workplace conditions". Journalists _are_ actively
investigating workplace conditions and their findings should be treated with
more seriousness than your friends or some person on HN.

> Journalists will write whatever sells the most clicks.

I agree the incentives aren't exactly well lined up to always promote ethical
behavior in journalism, but its not as flippant as you portray. It is a
serious profession and most journalists treat it as such.

> They're not some kind of scientists.

Agreed. But like I mention earlier, I trust their findings more than of my
personal experience or that of people I may have first-hand experience with.

~~~
belorn
Lets use what scientist writes and meta studies:
[https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12062/gender-differences-at-
crit...](https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12062/gender-differences-at-critical-
transitions-in-the-careers-of-science-engineering-and-mathematics-faculty) A
copy of a comment on this article on key findings from page 153, various
highlights:

 _\- The findings on academic hiring suggest that many women fared well in the
hiring process at Research I institutions, which contradicts some commonly
held perceptions of research-intensive universities. If women applied for
positions at RI institutions, they had a better chance of being interviewed
and receiving offers than had male job candidates.

\- The percentage of women who were interviewed for tenure-track or tenured
positions was higher than the percentage of women who applied.

\- For all disciplines the percentage of tenure-track women who received the
first job offer was greater than the percentage in the interview pool.

\- Female tenure-track and tenured faculty reported that they were more likely
to have mentors than male faculty.

\- Women were more likely than men to receive tenure when they came up for
tenure review._

~~~
mpweiher
For tech, the ACM did a survey. It is one of the few (maybe only) that asked
both women and men and came up with a lot of surprising findings:

" _Our results suggest that men and women share some but not all motivations
for entering IT. [..] men were significantly more likely than women to
identify "love of technology/computers" as a key motivator. Women, on the
other hand, more often indicated that "job security," "ease of entry," and
"flexible work hours" were primary reasons for entering the profession. This
pattern of results suggests that factors in the work itself are more important
in the career decision making of male IT professionals, while factors around
the job (such as flexible hours) are more important in the decision making of
female IT professionals._ "

" _Men and women in our survey both generally reported a similar level of
experience with role models. [..] This surprising finding does not support
previous assumptions that the lack of females in IT means a lack of role
models for women, which was assumed to be a disadvantage for women._ "

" _Our findings uncovered only one significant gender difference across a
variety of work-related experiences. [..] They differed in regard to their
perceptions of supervisor support related to their careers. This finding
indicates that women perceive greater support in meeting career goals,
recognizing opportunities, and improving their job performance._ "

[https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-
in-...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-the-it-
profession/fulltext)

------
azeotropic
This article reminds me of Dan Rather's "fake but accurate" posturing when he
got caught. There was no accident here. The media had a story it believed
desperately needed to be told, so they told it, facts be damned. This is who
they are and what they do.

------
prawn
I found it really interesting to read the comments on the post about "LeBron
James' school"^ and the first major post about the black hole image. The
recent LBJ story was a decent and constructive discussion, though I do
remember when it was first announced here (or r/NBA) that a few people thought
his role was overplayed. There are some parallels between both stories with
what gets media attention (a name and face) and what can serve to inspire
(athlete with undereducated kids, woman in STEM, etc).

^
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668821)

------
anjc
I'm confused about this. People said her code contribution on the repo was
minimal. Others in the field came out and said "yes but her algorithm was key
here, not lines of code". Fine. Her own statement then says that "no one
algorithm was key, it was a group effort", but her colleagues say her
algorithm wasn't used at all. The obfuscation doesn't seem accidental at all.

Why is a person sexist and homophobic [1] for wondering why two major news
articles say the opposite thing [1,2]:

[1]: "Katherine Bouman, a 29-year-old postdoctoral researcher who developed an
algorithm that was key to capturing the stunning visual."
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/12/trolls-
hija...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/12/trolls-hijacked-
scientists-image-attack-katie-bouman-they-picked-wrong-
astrophysicist/?utm_term=.3938e4714e12)

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

~~~
Canadauni
The quote that you included as part of [1] doesn't seem to be present in the
article you linked.

Getting down to your question I am not sure the fault lies with those who are
wondering about the difference between two opposing statements in the media.
The piece I take issue is that as soon as the picture of her with the image of
the black hole started to go viral the first thing many people did was check
her contributions to a repo on github to quantify the code that she wrote for
the project as a way to measure her which ultimately seems like something
someone would do out of feelings of inadequacy.

~~~
anjc
My mistake, it was in the other article I linked to.

Her current/future employers, her colleagues, and every academic's employers
and colleagues, want to know contributions. Some fields make you explicitly
list them for each paper. No doubt feelings of inadequacy feed into this at
some point, but it's part of the job and isn't saved for just measuring women.

~~~
Canadauni
Thanks for clearing that up. To my point about contributions, I was more
speaking about how people went directly to look at the code contributions in
lines of code measured by github in order to measure her specifically. I agree
that it is important to appropriately assess and acknowledge contributions in
academic work but pure volume of code written (which doesn't always correlate
with what github counts) doesn't necessarily quantify the contributions to an
academic work.

------
diydsp
in my feeds numerous in-place edits of an initial graphic with text competed
with varying narratives and cross-outs. people used them to project their
personal beliefs. hard to get any real information.

------
nitwit005
I'm sure part of that was people wanting to promote women in STEM, but there
also seems to be a lot of people tweaking headlines to find what gets the most
attention. People love reddit karma, and news sites want to bring in the
visitors.

