The Dark Saga of Katie Bouman, or the patriarchy at its finest

[r2dh2]

Here's the story:

Hard-working female scientist is the first to capture images of a black hole. People celebrate the discovery, until, "within hours, another strain of interpretation started metastasizing. Memes and videos across Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms called Bouman a fraud and “debunked” her contributions to the discovery."

In more detail:
This researcher, Katie Bouman, was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and a member of the team running Event Horizon Telescope, the effort to capture visual evidence of a black hole for the first time.

At first, the message was simple—Bouman stood out as a role model for young women and girls working in or aspiring to jobs in male-dominated science fields.

In many ways, this is an old story: A successful woman becomes a target of harassment online because she’s a successful woman. But the reaction to Bouman seems specific to this particular cultural moment, in which divergent views of gender, media, and science, usually flowing in their own little streams, smash together to form a massive riptide.

THEIR (harassers) "RIGHTFUL" CLAIM: “big science happens in BIG teams.”

THE DOUBLE STANDARD:
1) The myth of the lone genius. The idea that scientific breakthroughs originate with a single brilliant mind (usually male, usually white) is widespread. Awards such as the Nobel Prize are given to individuals, disregarding the team behind the scientific contribution.

2) A woman is promoted online for her contribution and internet trolls engage in online harassment plagued with "sexist claims and misogynist commentaries."

Here's the article:
The Dark Saga of Katie Bouman

Something to chew on if you have time...

 

[Skanky Vamp]

I think a lot of the issues arose in early reports where they claimed she was "the one responsible". She WASN'T and ISN'T the one responsible. There was a whole team of people involved. That's what the point of the initial "trolls" were, but then it got twisted and skewed. She led the way and provided much of the coding, but she wasn't the only one responsible. It took a team.

 

[r2dh2]

I think a lot of the issues arose in early reports where they claimed she was "the one responsible". She WASN'T and ISN'T the one responsible. There was a whole team of people involved. That's what the point of the initial "trolls" were, but then it got twisted and skewed. She led the way and provided much of the coding, but she wasn't the only one responsible. It took a team.

I absolutely agree with that. I'm a researcher, I know how it works (although in my field is more common to work alone). And that's why I mentioned "their rightful claim" (“big science happens in BIG teams”). My disagreement and "self-righteous" rage is with two things:

1) Some people pushed it to the point of harassing her using misogynistic and sexists comments/arguments. And it was a very intense harassment to the point that some people even started making fake profiles of her in an effort to discredit her.

2) This type of harassment rarely happens to men in science. It's more acceptable to attribute a discovery to a single male scientist than to their group, and people don't make a fuss over that; hence the example of the Nobel Prize, but there are many other examples where that happens.

I'm annoyed with the double standard, not what happened to her per se.

 

[Annie Hall]

Why it doesn't surprise me? Here are a couple of resources that might be useful for somebody who experiences online harassment. I'd dare to say that women and minorities are the most common targets, but anyone can be a "victim" of this vicious behavior. The websites cater more towards sexual harassment in the work place, but they might have some information relevant as of how to handle other offensive behavior that people might suffer online:

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

”To the Best of Our Knowledge” is a Peabody award-winning national public radio show that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. Deep interviews with philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, historians, and others help listeners find new sources of meaning, purpose, and wonder in daily...

www.ttbook.org

https://500womenscientists.org/endharassment

And there's an effort for giving women their rightful credit in scientific discoveries (if they contributed but for one reason or another, they didn't get credit for their participation):

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[MrsDupas]

As a woman I hate to be perceived as "victim" of society and I think some people are leading the #metoo movement into areas where it has nothing to do with its initial intention. Some people just hide behind it for any kind of iffy reason.

But, I'm fierce advocate of respectful interactions and I hate cyberbullying. It's so easy to hide behind a computer and make somebody's life miserable. And odds are usually more unfavorable for women. I wish there was a way to stop it.

 

[r2dh2]

MrsDupas I disagree, if you don't like the double standard, you should also be annoyed with what happened to her. Don't you think?

Well, yeah. It's more of a figure of speech. It's not fair to be the victim of internet trolls. I just was trying to make a bigger point, namely that this behavior is pervasive almost everywhere.

 

[thetopher]

As always, I struggle to see these things as evidence of the patriarchy, its just douchebags on the internet.

It's all the game of identity politics; people of both genders like to play it. 'Oh, all guys do this', 'oh, all women behave this way', 'oh, aren't the *other gender* is just the worst'

 

[r2dh2]

As always, I struggle to see these things as evidence of the patriarchy, its just douchebags on the internet.

It's all the game of identity politics; people of both genders like to play it. 'Oh, all guys do this', 'oh, all women behave this way', 'oh, aren't the *other gender* is just the worst'

Well, I guess it depends on how we define patriarchy. I interpret the term as a social organization where men are more likely to be in a position of power, and this system might be sustained through social norms. Meaning that we accept that there are traditional roles for women, which are different from the traditional roles from men. Girls are taught to be the princess and boys are encouraged to be heroes.

But, you are right, we don’t know who’s behind the screen. It could be men, or it could be women. But what we do know is that women are more likely to be at the receiving end of online negative behavior.

So, when I refer to the patriarchy, I’m just thinking about this social structure that for a long time has imposed different gender roles to men and to women, and if we deviate from those traditional roles, there’s gonna be backlash (in this case online harassment). But yes, you are right, I made the assumption that the harassers were male, when maybe it’s not the case.

 

[thrasherpix]

I think the reason this went viral is because Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez praised her. At that point, the army of trolls currently obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez HAD to discredit and tear down Bouman, not so much over her, but because doing so chips away at the clout and symbolic power of Ocasio-Cortez, lessening her as a political threat, or at least in an attempt to teach her to not speak up so much (since her articulate beliefs will draw much more fire than either her race or gender). That's the short and sweet (or is that nasty?) of course, and I don't want to say too much about Ocasio-Cortez for fear of exploding your thread with off topic stuff.

Had she not done so, then Bouman almost certainly, IMO, would not have been targeted. Suffice to say that I'm certain that the vast majority of trolls coming down on Bouman will never be as praiseworthy, intelligent, and knowledgeable as the woman they try to tear down, and never would've even heard of her (or realized she was a woman if they did) had Ocasio-Cortez not given her a shoutout.

 

[Giovanna]

I think the reason this went viral is because Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez praised her. At that point, the army of trolls currently obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez HAD to discredit and tear down Bouman, not so much over her, but because doing so chips away at the clout and symbolic power of Ocasio-Cortez, lessening her as a political threat, or at least in an attempt to teach her to not speak up so much (since her articulate beliefs will draw much more fire than either her race or gender). That's the short and sweet (or is that nasty?) of course, and I don't want to say too much about Ocasio-Cortez for fear of exploding your thread with off topic stuff.

Had she not done so, then Bouman almost certainly, IMO, would not have been targeted. Suffice to say that I'm certain that the vast majority of trolls coming down on Bouman will never be as praiseworthy, intelligent, and knowledgeable as the woman they try to tear down, and never would've even heard of her (or realized she was a woman if they did) had Ocasio-Cortez not given her a shoutout.

Yeah, you're right. This case was mixture of politics and science (apparently they don't mix, haha). But I do believe that it also has to do with gender. I mean, if Ocasio-Cortez praises a male scientist, would we see the same type of response against him? People even went as far as creating fake profiles of her (from what I read in the article) and I read some of the comments, they are sexual and go low low low. Some people have nothing better to do than trolling people and making other's miserable. It's sad.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Here is how I read the article, and what was said on the ABC news. That many scientists sent info that was put together to create a photograph of a black hole.
The woman claims she did it yet the post states she was a member of a team.
Was it stated what her role in the team was, if it was I missed that bit.

 

[HowiMetdaSlayer]

I read it as her being the one to come with the idea of how to take the 'photograph'?

 

[r2dh2]

Here's the timeline as I put it together from different sources (Male scientists are often cast as lone geniuses. Here’s what happened when a woman was., How Katie Bouman Shook Wikipedia, Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take the first picture of a black hole)

1. Katie Bouman is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. As a post-doc, she usually works with a primary investigator who has a specific project in mind for which they hire analysts, doctoral students and post-doctoral students.

2. In 2016, she gives a TED-talk (How to take a picture of a black hole). In this talk, she explains what they expect to accomplish and how to do it. For that, they have an international team of scientists, an earth sized telescope, and an algorithm that puts together the final picture.

3. Finally, in April of 2019, they get the first picture ever of a black-hole.

4. MIT posts a tweet where you can see the picture of the black hole and Katie is seating at the desk:




And the caption reads: "Here's the moment when the first black hole image was processed, from the eyes of researcher Katie Bouman. #EHTBlackHole #BlackHoleDay #BlackHole (v/@dfbarajas)"

5. The NYT begins hailing Bouman as the “face of the black hole project.”

6. Katie is congratulated by politicians, among them Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. It goes viral.

7. People contra argue that it was a team and not Katie, which is a claim that neither her nor MIT made. It was a claim made by the newspapers and the politicians.

8. MIT finally clarifies that it was a team of researchers:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1116775487420997632

9. In response to the attention, Bouman wrote in a Facebook post: “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.”

10. But the damaged is done:

- Trolls set up fake Twitter accounts and fake Instagram accounts in Bouman’s name and had the fake Bouman claim that her colleague Andrew Chael wrote 850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written into the algorithm that found the black hole.
- claimed that the only thing Bouman contributed was “changing fonts” in the code, suggesting that this was secretarial work that a high school student could handle.
- And she keeps experiencing harassment with misogynistic and sexual undertones.

EDIT: I cannot figure out exactly what her role was.

Second EDIT: What bothered me the most is that she's a woman who unwillingly became the face of this discovery and she was viciously attacked. And the attacks have a gender undertone.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Sounds like that Katie Bowman should have taken some advice from the guy who wrote Chariot of the Gods.

 

[KatrinaL]

I think that for me the question is still if this is gender specific or not. Knowing that would help with your claim that we have rigid social roles by gender and if we cross the line, we are punished. In other words, suppose it was a guy not a girl in the picture, would all of these could have happened with the SAME intensity?

 

[ILLYRIAN]

As I understood that, it wasn't that a woman said she did it, it was that she made a claimed that was wrong. If a bloke made a claim that was so clearly wrong he'd get shot down in flames. As for the same intensity would that be to your level, my level or the level that wasn't stated?

 

[r2dh2]

@ILLYRIAN can you elaborate? I'm not familiar with the Chariot of the Gods.

@KatrinaL @Giovanna @thetopher @thrasherpix Maybe you're right and I'm reading too mucho into the gender part of the article. But it pisses me off so much when people get into mob mentality and use any means to make somebody miserable. I still think that there's a gender component, tho.

But at least I know two things:
1. This is a good discussion article for the BB, our protagonist is a bad-ass super hero GIRL.

2. BB is a safe space for having respectful interactions and not having to deal with trolls.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

r2dh2,
in reply #1 she claims to be the first to capture images of a black hole yet by reply #13 she was a scientist who helped make the image.
Erich Von Daniken wrote the book Chariots of the Gods in a way that used a heck of a lot of ' authors license ' he said he was there at the discovery of an item even though he wasn't, but he never claimed he discovered the item. If Katie Bouman had claimed to be part of the team who took the first picture there would be no fuss. (that's my opinion).

Just a thought though, if that is the first photograph of a black hole, who gave it that name and is that a black hole? The images I've seen in magazines look very different to the picture used.

 

[Stephan]

I find a bit ironic that you briefly mentioned the Nobel Prize given that they having their own dirty little secrets being exposed: sexual harassment, leaking information, issues with funding, and so on. I guess corruption permeates everywhere.

 

[Leo]

I find a bit ironic that you briefly mentioned the Nobel Prize given that they having their own dirty little secrets being exposed: sexual harassment, leaking information, issues with funding, and so on. I guess corruption permeates everywhere.

Uh, let's not open this can of worms. There's disappointment and abuse of power everywhere.