> Watson recognized the pattern as a helix because his co-worker Francis Crick had previously published a paper of what the diffraction pattern of a helix would be.
So Crick had already predicted and published on the x-ray pattern of a helix. Further from wikipedia:
> Watson and Crick used characteristics and features of Photo 51, together with evidence from multiple other sources, to develop the chemical model of the DNA molecule
Seems like they did what all good scientists do: gather all evidence and examine them. This article verges on hyperbole.
The Wikipedia page is much more balanced, noting that there is controversy over whether Franklin would have published a theory on the helical structure of DNA, whether she would have allowed Watson and Crick to even see the photo, and mentions that Watson had presented a distorted image of Franklin in his book.
It's funny that, apparently, the picture in question was taken by a male graduate student whose name no one knows (Raymond Gosling).
I do think there's an interesting dichotomy in science between wild conjectures and slow, plodding progress. But I'm not sure that Rosalind Franklin was actually an exemplar of the latter.
It seems clear that we need both methods but, for my money, we're a bit lacking on the wid conjecture side these days. More and more, exciting research is occurring outside of academia partly because academia is all-in on the slow, plodding kind of science.
The whole idea that Watson & Crick "stole" the data from Franklin was actually created by Watson himself in his not very truthful memoir "The Double Helix" because he thought that was funny (although his idea of humor is questionable). In reality, Gosling took the photo and Maurice Wilkins, who shared his graduate student Gosling with Franklin, gave the photo to Watson & Crick. People can certainly argue that Wilkins should have consulted with Franklin before sharing the data (and for that matter with Gosling, whose opinion never seems to be considered) but the idea that it was solely her data (or that she herself even took the photo which some accounts claim) is simply false.
> Once they saw Photograph 51, Watson and Crick rushed to publish a paper on their model, incorporating the image.
Which is an unfair character characterisation, because according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51):
> Watson recognized the pattern as a helix because his co-worker Francis Crick had previously published a paper of what the diffraction pattern of a helix would be.
So Crick had already predicted and published on the x-ray pattern of a helix. Further from wikipedia:
> Watson and Crick used characteristics and features of Photo 51, together with evidence from multiple other sources, to develop the chemical model of the DNA molecule
Seems like they did what all good scientists do: gather all evidence and examine them. This article verges on hyperbole.
The Wikipedia page is much more balanced, noting that there is controversy over whether Franklin would have published a theory on the helical structure of DNA, whether she would have allowed Watson and Crick to even see the photo, and mentions that Watson had presented a distorted image of Franklin in his book.