Dr. Katie Bouman Gets Accused Of Taking All The Credit For Black Hole Pic, Her Male Colleague Clears The Air On Twitter
It was the smile that was seen all around the world – a look of pure giddiness over a monumental discovery – of something bigger than our solar system or our sun. Twenty-nine-year-old computer scientist Katie Bouman and along with four other teams had captured the first photo of a black hole and her joyful expression said it all. Bauman soon to be an assistant professor at Caltech, first posted the photo on her Facebook, which was screenshotted and sent a massive ripple across the internet. Soon she unwittingly became “face” of the discovery, with outlets even writing pieces on her – but some people were not happy.
In a reverse ‘Hidden Figures’ these trolls began digging around the internet to find the real (man) person responsible for this scientific feat. They landed on Andrew Chael, listed on GitHub as the primary developer for one of the algorithms of the monumental discovery – but he was quick to shut them down.
Computer scientist Katie Bouman has become the face of the first black hole photo in history – and internet trolls are not pleased
Image credits: Katie Bouman
The MIT graduate posted the photo of her delighted face on her Facebook with the caption: “Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed.” Which was screengrabbed by fellow Indiana native David Barajas and posted to Twitter. The tweet went viral after it was retweeted by MIT CSAIL and while many congratulated her efforts others sought to bring her down.
Image credits: minimaxir
Image credits: Unknown
Thousands of people started upvoting/giving attention to audacious posts where people tried to diminish her efforts
Image credits: reddit.com
Instead, they tried to direct everyone’s attention to this guy, who according to them, played a more important role in the project.
Image credits: reddit.com
Trolls disputed that Bouman should be receiving the level of acclaim she was and said that the real credit should go to Andrew Chael, who was listed as a primary developer on Gitub – a development platform where you can host and review code, manage projects, and build software. Chael quickly came to the defense of his colleague with a series of tweets.
Yet Andrew Chael, the man around an estimated 68,000 lines of code for the photo, stood up for his colleague in a Twitter thread
Image credits: Andrew Chael
He told The Washington Post. he believed the trolling came from a place of pure misogyny, “It was clearly started by people who were upset that a woman had become the face of this story and decided, ‘I’m going to find someone who reflects my narrative instead.'” The trolls on sites like Reddit wrote that Chael alone was responsible for writing 850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code for the project which according to the developer is completely false, “I did not write “850,000 lines of code” — many of those “lines” tracked by github are in model files,” Chael said in his tweets. “There are about 68,000 lines in the current software, and I don’t care how many of those I personally authored.”
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
Image credits: thisgreyspirit
While Bouman deserves credit for her role she wrote on her Facebook that this history-making feat was indisputably a team accomplishment: “No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat. It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all.”
Image credits: Katie Bouman
The misogyny of this controversy was not lost on most people in the comments
Image credits: Triston_Bowman
Image credits: Mehdimoitou
Image credits: johndee15270713
Image credits: Lilpandapaw
Image credits: Lilpandapaw
Recognition for contributions in science is a historic problem that women have had to deal with that is still present to this day. After the blockbuster film Hidden Figures the US State Department was inspired to launch the Hidden No More, a program to increase awareness of the crucial role women play in STEM fields, but there is still so much more that needs to be done. Women in science are cited less in their research, have a more difficult time getting published and are paid 40 percent less in fields like physics and astronomy.
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Blame the media first. The first time I heard from this lady was an article which basically said that she, by herself, wrote the whole thing. And poor girl tried to correct them that it was a teamwork.
Reading about people who attack someone who help discover the black hole just because she is a woman is horrible.
It’s not because she’s a woman, It just didn’t look like she did anything, because of made up statistics, not gender.
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The media decided to use her as the face of the discovery, but I have heard her, several times, giving credit to the whole team of scientists across the world. She states quite clearly that she is part of a team.
Tina Yim hits it on the head with her Twitter comment. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, would be bitching about the team not being mentioned if a man were getting the credit in the first place.
If you think people attacking her for being a woman is bad, I suggest you never Google whether she's Jewish or not. The utter depravity from insecure incels you will encounter will make you weep for humanity.
Incels have been making me cringe for our species for a long time. I caught c**p from one just b/c he was sure I got where I got b/c of being female. Yeah, the GPA and hard work and all that didn't contribute at all... *SMH*
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Did she write most of the Code? Not even close. However if She lead the whole team, and project. I understand that dude feels like the guy who wrote 80,000 lines of code should get some respect and he should. But so should she , she was the manager of the project thus she was the team leader, project leader and to manage a group of people to create these type of results is pretty amazing.
He wrote 80,000 out of 68,000 lines of code? Quite the accomplishment. Not to mention that 'lines of code written' is a pretty useless measurement of contribution.
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All I know is when I looked at her picture, I just thought what an absolutely pure and sweet reaction to a really awesome moment. I think it's such a sweet picture. I give her credit for everything she did for that picture as well as everybody else but let her have her moment. My God the internet is ridiculous
Number of code line comparison is not a reliable comparison, since each line could have astronomical difference in technical difficulty. Beside, that task of the manager and QC tester and also peer reviewer is also very important
History always shows that whomever gets it out there first has their name and face attached to it forever. Darwin was not the first to come up with the theory of evolution...he was just the first one to get it to print. She acknowledges that this accomplishment was not the work of just one person...it was a group of dedicated people. The tragedy here is that people are looking for a single person to give the credit to because their brains somehow can't get wrapped around the fact that anything can be accomplished as long as people are willing to work together. She did nothing wrong and is not trying to steal anyone's thunder. People need to get over it.
Good for him for speaking out! And good for all of them for making that picture! That's awesome!
Wtf is going on with the world? Is this going backwards to medieval times?
Lame media, and lame social standards that anyone thinks a woman in science is the story when we just GOT A PICTURE OF A BLACK HOLE! STEM is vital to society, no matter the person's gender, and I say that as a woman in STEM. Quit making our gender the main story. She did a lot of work, kudos to her, and to ALL who worked on it, the end, now let's get another picture to see what else we can learn... IMHO...
He mentioned if, without her work, it wouldn't have worked. If this was a male scientist, he'd be praised like a hero whose work saved us all blah blah! I hate to compare it like that, but man, can't we just be happy that we actually get to see how a black hole looks like? She didn't ignore her team, it's sad that media don't cover her whole team, but she personally did not deny her team's work, and she personally praised them for the work. So why is she getting attacked??? It is so f*****g sad that people just hate the fact that it could be teeny tiny related to feminism, and just denied her influence completely. Those people who claim it's unfair, actually are being unfair themselves! They themselves turned this into a sexism topic.
Anyone judging developer contribution purely by counting lines of code is a moron. She may very well have contributed parts that required a lot of research, brain work and testing, while what's going into the source repo in the end is relatively few lines of code. There may be a huge amount of work behind a simple and effective implementation, because optimization is part of the job. You simply cannot judge contribution by just counting lines of code.
Good for her and her being mentioned so many times doesn't take away from the group effort and achievements. The only reason she is mentioned so much is because somehow men started to c**p on her involvement and it went on and on and here we are.
I never knew coding was involved with outer space. Learn something new everyday!
It is quite normal that big discoveries get one or only a few faces while many people worked on them. Usually that's the project leader or people who can speak best in public. But media will always jump onto the people that are most likeable. So here you have a women that looks full of joy which enables media to show the readers the significance of a highly complex topic on an emotional level so even people who have no idea about the science behind it can identify with it. Of course media will jump on it. Good for her and good for her team as that way the work of everybody involved will get more coverage. Only people who are not satisfied with their own situation will see something negative instead of the good in it.
Intelligence, perseverance, proper funding and a difficult, but as it turned out, achievable goal made this reality. We all know what some immature internet trolls love to do. Drag them out into the sun! Yes, the sun. The same sun that keeps our planet warming up because of our recklessness as a species. ALL SCIENTISTS OUT THERE: Can you please all focus on keeping Earth livable for future generations! We will never inhabit another planet. We need to love the only one we will ever have.
And point is- keep bitching left and right. They know they've done it together and it's all that matter :)
Men are acting like f*****g babies again, what’s new. On another note, is anyone way more shocked that this lady is TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD than whatever anyone’s gender is? That seems awfully young to be one of the most accomplished people in your field.
The thing is, Neumann didn't develop his architecture alone but nobody knows the team behind that, Einstein couldn't formulate his ideas but nobody talks about the mathematician, Marie Curie didn't work alone as well, or there is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Michelangelo, Fibonacci, Pythagoras, etc. they didn't work alone. Or the reforms of famous kings were teamwork. Nobody knows the team. Sometimes because there is one mastermind and lots of "gears" who make it. Or sometimes, for example in the case of the kings, there is one who has power/right to authorise and many who develop the proposal. People need to be able to link an idea/thing to a name/face. It has always been so, it will always be so.
Quote: "But also allowed the development of an affective technique to detect assoles on Twitter" THIS, is priceless and it just made my day! Also, congrats for that huge discovery, all of you.
i like Andrew because its not a big deal for him that only katie's face was recognized. He had contributions too but he's not a show-off.
people would NEVER rush to ask if a woman was on the team if a man had been given all of the credit for an important scientific discovery. even if someone did, they would be lost amongst all the men collectively giving themselves a clap on the back. it doesn't matter if the media has ommited the part of her giving credit to her colleagues. women and their contributions towards human advancement have ALWAYS been ignored and erased by men for men. She deserves every bit of the credit she has received for her work.
These trolls don't care about teams getting the credit where credit is due. I bet not a single one of them could point to single other place they'd fought for uncredited members of a team behind a major discovery or achievement. Except, of course, if one of the main people being recognised for it was a women. These trolls just openly want to attack women. The more other men call them out for being dill holes the less rewarding it will get for them.
Anyone who has ever worked on a project anything remotely like that would simply KNOW that it was a team effort. Whatever she posted, it would be obvious that it was no one person who accomplished that. If someone were "fooled" by her post, that is on THEM. Her picture is such a great representation of the awe that many people subsequently felt around the world, though of course few would feel as giddy as the people who actually accomplished this feat.
They must have used a lot of libraries to develop the entire system. Why do people who don't know about software development need to comment about line codes? LOL. Well, on the other hand, the guy seems to be a good person and a good teammate. I will follow him on twt.
I'm not trying to start anything here but it seems to me that all of the people going "--but, the *team*!" are doing the same thing as the "all lives matter" people. Like, yes, that's true, but 1) she openly (and early on) acknowledged the huge team behind it and 2) yes there was a team but she DID make a lot of the specifics happen that allowed for the photo.
The photo of the black hole will go down in history....along with the social media bickering and lies that went with it.
Och, och... al die eencellige patatjes die er zo heilig van overtuigd zijn dat hun zielige, vaak ongefundeerde en bijna altijd de plank misslaande meninkjes ertoe doen... losers whoehahaha
ignorant pissant/a*****e. try reading it all again...wait-you're a fucktard b***h/c**t. and yes, i am aware of not capitalizing here, but plenty of people don't, either, but have way more sense than you, so i won't bother with the last period, as well
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Blame the media first. The first time I heard from this lady was an article which basically said that she, by herself, wrote the whole thing. And poor girl tried to correct them that it was a teamwork.
Reading about people who attack someone who help discover the black hole just because she is a woman is horrible.
It’s not because she’s a woman, It just didn’t look like she did anything, because of made up statistics, not gender.
Load More Replies... The media decided to use her as the face of the discovery, but I have heard her, several times, giving credit to the whole team of scientists across the world. She states quite clearly that she is part of a team.
Tina Yim hits it on the head with her Twitter comment. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, would be bitching about the team not being mentioned if a man were getting the credit in the first place.
If you think people attacking her for being a woman is bad, I suggest you never Google whether she's Jewish or not. The utter depravity from insecure incels you will encounter will make you weep for humanity.
Incels have been making me cringe for our species for a long time. I caught c**p from one just b/c he was sure I got where I got b/c of being female. Yeah, the GPA and hard work and all that didn't contribute at all... *SMH*
Load More Replies... Did she write most of the Code? Not even close. However if She lead the whole team, and project. I understand that dude feels like the guy who wrote 80,000 lines of code should get some respect and he should. But so should she , she was the manager of the project thus she was the team leader, project leader and to manage a group of people to create these type of results is pretty amazing.
He wrote 80,000 out of 68,000 lines of code? Quite the accomplishment. Not to mention that 'lines of code written' is a pretty useless measurement of contribution.
Load More Replies... All I know is when I looked at her picture, I just thought what an absolutely pure and sweet reaction to a really awesome moment. I think it's such a sweet picture. I give her credit for everything she did for that picture as well as everybody else but let her have her moment. My God the internet is ridiculous
Number of code line comparison is not a reliable comparison, since each line could have astronomical difference in technical difficulty. Beside, that task of the manager and QC tester and also peer reviewer is also very important
History always shows that whomever gets it out there first has their name and face attached to it forever. Darwin was not the first to come up with the theory of evolution...he was just the first one to get it to print. She acknowledges that this accomplishment was not the work of just one person...it was a group of dedicated people. The tragedy here is that people are looking for a single person to give the credit to because their brains somehow can't get wrapped around the fact that anything can be accomplished as long as people are willing to work together. She did nothing wrong and is not trying to steal anyone's thunder. People need to get over it.
Good for him for speaking out! And good for all of them for making that picture! That's awesome!
Wtf is going on with the world? Is this going backwards to medieval times?
Lame media, and lame social standards that anyone thinks a woman in science is the story when we just GOT A PICTURE OF A BLACK HOLE! STEM is vital to society, no matter the person's gender, and I say that as a woman in STEM. Quit making our gender the main story. She did a lot of work, kudos to her, and to ALL who worked on it, the end, now let's get another picture to see what else we can learn... IMHO...
He mentioned if, without her work, it wouldn't have worked. If this was a male scientist, he'd be praised like a hero whose work saved us all blah blah! I hate to compare it like that, but man, can't we just be happy that we actually get to see how a black hole looks like? She didn't ignore her team, it's sad that media don't cover her whole team, but she personally did not deny her team's work, and she personally praised them for the work. So why is she getting attacked??? It is so f*****g sad that people just hate the fact that it could be teeny tiny related to feminism, and just denied her influence completely. Those people who claim it's unfair, actually are being unfair themselves! They themselves turned this into a sexism topic.
Anyone judging developer contribution purely by counting lines of code is a moron. She may very well have contributed parts that required a lot of research, brain work and testing, while what's going into the source repo in the end is relatively few lines of code. There may be a huge amount of work behind a simple and effective implementation, because optimization is part of the job. You simply cannot judge contribution by just counting lines of code.
Good for her and her being mentioned so many times doesn't take away from the group effort and achievements. The only reason she is mentioned so much is because somehow men started to c**p on her involvement and it went on and on and here we are.
I never knew coding was involved with outer space. Learn something new everyday!
It is quite normal that big discoveries get one or only a few faces while many people worked on them. Usually that's the project leader or people who can speak best in public. But media will always jump onto the people that are most likeable. So here you have a women that looks full of joy which enables media to show the readers the significance of a highly complex topic on an emotional level so even people who have no idea about the science behind it can identify with it. Of course media will jump on it. Good for her and good for her team as that way the work of everybody involved will get more coverage. Only people who are not satisfied with their own situation will see something negative instead of the good in it.
Intelligence, perseverance, proper funding and a difficult, but as it turned out, achievable goal made this reality. We all know what some immature internet trolls love to do. Drag them out into the sun! Yes, the sun. The same sun that keeps our planet warming up because of our recklessness as a species. ALL SCIENTISTS OUT THERE: Can you please all focus on keeping Earth livable for future generations! We will never inhabit another planet. We need to love the only one we will ever have.
And point is- keep bitching left and right. They know they've done it together and it's all that matter :)
Men are acting like f*****g babies again, what’s new. On another note, is anyone way more shocked that this lady is TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD than whatever anyone’s gender is? That seems awfully young to be one of the most accomplished people in your field.
The thing is, Neumann didn't develop his architecture alone but nobody knows the team behind that, Einstein couldn't formulate his ideas but nobody talks about the mathematician, Marie Curie didn't work alone as well, or there is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Michelangelo, Fibonacci, Pythagoras, etc. they didn't work alone. Or the reforms of famous kings were teamwork. Nobody knows the team. Sometimes because there is one mastermind and lots of "gears" who make it. Or sometimes, for example in the case of the kings, there is one who has power/right to authorise and many who develop the proposal. People need to be able to link an idea/thing to a name/face. It has always been so, it will always be so.
Quote: "But also allowed the development of an affective technique to detect assoles on Twitter" THIS, is priceless and it just made my day! Also, congrats for that huge discovery, all of you.
i like Andrew because its not a big deal for him that only katie's face was recognized. He had contributions too but he's not a show-off.
people would NEVER rush to ask if a woman was on the team if a man had been given all of the credit for an important scientific discovery. even if someone did, they would be lost amongst all the men collectively giving themselves a clap on the back. it doesn't matter if the media has ommited the part of her giving credit to her colleagues. women and their contributions towards human advancement have ALWAYS been ignored and erased by men for men. She deserves every bit of the credit she has received for her work.
These trolls don't care about teams getting the credit where credit is due. I bet not a single one of them could point to single other place they'd fought for uncredited members of a team behind a major discovery or achievement. Except, of course, if one of the main people being recognised for it was a women. These trolls just openly want to attack women. The more other men call them out for being dill holes the less rewarding it will get for them.
Anyone who has ever worked on a project anything remotely like that would simply KNOW that it was a team effort. Whatever she posted, it would be obvious that it was no one person who accomplished that. If someone were "fooled" by her post, that is on THEM. Her picture is such a great representation of the awe that many people subsequently felt around the world, though of course few would feel as giddy as the people who actually accomplished this feat.
They must have used a lot of libraries to develop the entire system. Why do people who don't know about software development need to comment about line codes? LOL. Well, on the other hand, the guy seems to be a good person and a good teammate. I will follow him on twt.
I'm not trying to start anything here but it seems to me that all of the people going "--but, the *team*!" are doing the same thing as the "all lives matter" people. Like, yes, that's true, but 1) she openly (and early on) acknowledged the huge team behind it and 2) yes there was a team but she DID make a lot of the specifics happen that allowed for the photo.
The photo of the black hole will go down in history....along with the social media bickering and lies that went with it.
Och, och... al die eencellige patatjes die er zo heilig van overtuigd zijn dat hun zielige, vaak ongefundeerde en bijna altijd de plank misslaande meninkjes ertoe doen... losers whoehahaha
ignorant pissant/a*****e. try reading it all again...wait-you're a fucktard b***h/c**t. and yes, i am aware of not capitalizing here, but plenty of people don't, either, but have way more sense than you, so i won't bother with the last period, as well
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