"In a full description of the structure in a paper submitted in August 1953 and published in 1954, Crick and Watson did attempt to set the record straight17. They acknowledged that, without Franklin’s data, “the formulation of our structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible”, and implicitly referred to the MRC report as a “preliminary report” in which Franklin and Wilkins had “independently suggested that the basic structure of the paracrystalline [B] form is helical and contains two intertwined chains”."
It's not in this article, but I have a vague recollection from other discussions that the actual x-ray diffraction image was taken by one of Franklin's graduate students.
> That is correct, it was Gosling. This whole "controversy" is so stupid.
Graduate students aren't cited for coming up with innovations - the controversy is valid, but for some reason, people keep finding reasons to maintain a heterodox opinion.
The images weren't even shared with Watson/Crick by Franklin but by someone else.
Twinlaw's father is a super famous electrical engineer, retired professor emeritus with hundreds of papers (often as first) published author.
Be careful asking him about anything "he's published" since the mid-90s — because he often won't know anything about the topic. Instead, some grad-student lists you first to draw publicity to his own subordinate PhD / thesis.
After inventing a monumental concept in EE microchip design, you can just sort of rest on your laurels, just because of your name recognition (with permission, of course).
But after myself dropping out of grad school, decades ago, I've shared many lazy whiskeys with former colleagues, contemplating the "what if"s of two traveled old men. I regret nothing but happily engaged laziness.
> Graduate students aren't cited for coming up with innovations
Nonsense.
> the controversy is valid,
No. You can see both publications right here [1]. Watson and Crick explicitly say they are aware of the "general nature" of Franklin's results, but they are the only ones in that issue to propose the double helix structure with the specific features that explained all of the evidence, published and unpublished.
Ironically the "drama" narrative which was constructed much later making for a good story to tell could have been avoided right from the start.
Just three weeks after the publications in Nature (April 1953), a Time journalist Joan Bruce was made aware of the hottest story in science and described the discovery in her nearly publication-ready article (professional photoshoots of Watson/Crick were already taken, yes one of those pictures [0] was consequently prominently featured in The Double Helix 15 years (!) later) as a joint effort of two teams (Wilkins/Franklin & Watson/Crick) but the story was killed because apparently among other consulted scientists Franklin herself found the science lacking, it wasn't revised and subsequently no article was published at the time. No pun intended.
> Three weeks after the three DNA papers were published in Nature, Bragg gave a lecture on the discovery at Guy’s Hospital Medical School in London, which was reported on the front page of the British News Chronicle daily newspaper. This drew the attention of Joan Bruce, a London journalist working for Time. Although Bruce’s article has never been published — or described by historians, until now — it is notable for its novel take on the discovery of the double helix.
Bruce portrayed the work as being done by “two teams”: one, consisting of Wilkins and Franklin, gathering experimental evidence using X-ray analysis; “the other” comprising Watson and Crick, working on theory. To a certain extent, wrote Bruce, the teams worked independently, although “they linked up, confirming each other’s work from time to time, or wrestling over a common problem”. For example, Watson and Crick had “started to work on the double helix theory as a result of Wilkins’ X-rays”. Conversely, she wrote, Franklin was “checking the Cavendish model against her own X-rays, not always confirming the Cavendish structural theory”. It has not escaped our notice that both examples render Franklin in a position of strength, every bit a peer of Wilkins, Crick and Watson.
Unfortunately, Bruce was not so strong on the science. Her article got far enough for Time to send a Cambridge photographer, Anthony Barrington Brown, to shoot portraits of Watson and Crick, and for Watson to tell his friends to watch for it. But it never appeared, perhaps because Franklin told Bruce that it needed an awful lot of work to get the science straight. Bruce’s take on the discovery was buried, and Barrington Brown’s compelling images disappeared until Watson resurrected the best of them 15 years later, for The Double Helix.
It is tantalizing to think how people might remember the double-helix story had Bruce’s article been published, suitably scientifically corrected. From the outset, Franklin would have been represented as an equal member of a quartet who solved the double helix, one half of the team that articulated the scientific question, took important early steps towards a solution, provided crucial data and verified the result. Indeed, one of the first public displays of the double helix, at the Royal Society Conversazione in June 1953, was signed by the authors of all three Nature papers. In this early incarnation, the discovery of the structure of DNA was not seen as a race won by Watson and Crick, but as the outcome of a joint effort.
According to journalist Horace Freeland Judson and Franklin’s biographer, Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin has been reduced to the “wronged heroine” of the double helix. She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure.[1][2]
> My understanding is that it was done by her grad student, Raymond Gosling.
Ah yes, this is why we all know the name of the person who proposed the original iPhone project! And also why the name of the researcher who first thought of GPTs is on everyone's mind (and why nobody can remember the name of the laboratory where the work was done)!
And it's why whenever we invent something on our employer's dime, the patent doesn't bother to mention the people who took the risk of supporting the invention.
These people are academics, their entire career and ability to get continued funding depends on getting personal credit for their work. That is entirely different from working for a private company.
> Graduate students, and even post-doctoral researchers, are not the ones cited for breakthroughs from a laboratory.
What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work. Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author. They both get credit for their respective roles in a very tangible way that is usually the deciding factor in career progression. They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
Moreover, no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
> What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work.
This is true in the sense of purported plagiarism, but not in the sense of citing who is 'responsible for the idea'. Review articles will often cite a senior article when describing work performed over time, even if the primary authors have changed.
> Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author.
This convention varies by field and is not universal. It is isn't even constant in all fields of biology
> They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
This depends strongly on where the work is done (even the department within a university)
> no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
The assertion about no academics in companies is not true at all—being an academic has little to do with where money comes from (if this were true, there were no academics at all in the 1700s, an obviously false statement).
Bell Labs, Google, MS and others have formal research institutes within their organizations. I agree that each has conventions around recognition, just like in other areas of research.
I’m still not quite sure what you mean by credit, perhaps you mean casually using the PIs name over the students in things like review articles and talks?
I’m an academic PI and when I was first getting started as an undergrad I had a falling out with a lab that had an abusive and toxic culture, and tried to publish some of my work without crediting me after I had graduated and left. I was able to contest the authorship and the journal actually changed the author list to properly credit me.
When there is an effort to “elevate people of type X” you have to suspect that some large number of those “elevations” are fraudulent rewriting of history. I immediately ignore the whole lot.
Peek just a little bit behind the curtain and it always turns out the controversy is fake.
Pretty much the normal version of history has been accurate for a while.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, you're right--I've seen lots of social media memes that basically say stuff like, "Einstein was an idiot, it was his wife that did all the work!" when that's patently a false statement.
But I also know that a lot of that sort of thing DID happen. Women, marginalized groups, etc., were written out of history on a regular basis.
The problem is, the issue requires nuance and intellectually honest discussion. And that doesn't exist when you're trying to create the next biggest clickbait article or meme.
I'm not sure at what point it must have way overcorrected. Most if not every single thing I was taught in school that a lot members of this group did/invented turned out to be an exaggeration or outright lie, I came to find out later.
Which is a shame, because most of their stories are interesting in their own right to have been properly explained. Now, instead of lifting anyone up, we're doing some weird dance of fighting back and forth about who is lying(and usually, the answer is both sides).
> Most if not every single thing I was taught in school that a lot members of this group did/invented turned out to be an exaggeration or outright lie, I came to find out later.
I think this (unfortunately common) impression comes from a misunderstanding of how scientific work actually happens. No one is working independently in their own labs and doing all of the work without help from anyone else, ultimately culminating in a Eureka! All of this work is collaborative, and recognition of individuals who had a particularly compelling insight or experimental result in this collaborative process is not a dismissal or denigration of anyone else who may have contributed.
> Women, marginalized groups, etc., were written out of history on a regular basis.
Written out? Or just not written in? There's a big difference. Almost everyone isn't written into history. But nobody cares about the white men who aren't written in because the people who are were also white men.
It's quite likely the next Einstein will be a man. But that doesn't mean that being a man means you're likely to be the next Einstein.
The problem is we are all obsessed with finding the very best people in each category whether it be science, sports, arts etc. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just what we're like. If you were going to read a memoir would you pick Einstein, or the janitor who cleaned his office?
It just so happens that many of these "top spots" will be occupied by men, for one reason or another. I can see that it sucks if there are no role models that you can relate to. It must seem like boys have all this potential and that's not fair. But 99% of them won't succeed, and that sucks too. The grass is always greener on the other side.
> Written out? Or just not written in? There's a big difference. Almost everyone isn't written into history. But nobody cares about the white men who aren't written in because the people who are were also white men.
I mean, not too long ago there was a very popular movement online about celebrating white man Nikola Tesla, who was seen as not being given his fair place in history for his discoveries. People love a perceived underdog.
Come on... It's 2025. If this were true you don't think by now at least one woman would have published her work under a man's name just to prove a point?
It takes a certain type of brain to be an Einstein. That type of brain is extremely rare in any part of the population, but it's exceedingly rare for women. It's not better or worse, it's just different. It's like red paint or blue paint. You don't have to rank one higher than the other, but you clearly do. Look inside yourself and ask why. If you want to make a difference you'd find a way for everyone to feel great about themselves rather than assume malice.
> When there is an effort to “elevate people of type X” you have to suspect that some large number of those “elevations” are fraudulent rewriting of history. I immediately ignore the whole lot.
A significant part of all credit in the world is assigned fraudulently, it is just a fact. It is because with credit comes prestige and wealth, etc. So humans generally seek it out and many lie about it.
I'm very happy that this view is getting some broader attention. In the abstract, it's no different than it's always been: history is written by the victors. The particulars are going to be era-specific, as you've noted. _Any_ ideology is going to have its blind spots and its convenient lies.
I think knowingly or unknowingly this person just summed it up - there was an effort(last 2-3 centuries) to elevate people of just one type (let's say X) and a lot of those were just fraudulent and now the effort is to elevate these other types (rest of the types minus type X) and a lot of these might also be fraudulent. So I think deliberately elevating a type leads to some fraudulence. It doesn't mean we should judge the types but that we should be careful which we should be anyway.
This comment is not going to age well. This is same attitude that everyone has had since recorded history. And they are regularly proven wrong. By either intention or omission history is rarely balanced and accurate.
"In a full description of the structure in a paper submitted in August 1953 and published in 1954, Crick and Watson did attempt to set the record straight17. They acknowledged that, without Franklin’s data, “the formulation of our structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible”, and implicitly referred to the MRC report as a “preliminary report” in which Franklin and Wilkins had “independently suggested that the basic structure of the paracrystalline [B] form is helical and contains two intertwined chains”."
What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
It's not in this article, but I have a vague recollection from other discussions that the actual x-ray diffraction image was taken by one of Franklin's graduate students.
That is correct, it was Gosling. This whole "controversy" is so stupid.
> That is correct, it was Gosling. This whole "controversy" is so stupid.
Graduate students aren't cited for coming up with innovations - the controversy is valid, but for some reason, people keep finding reasons to maintain a heterodox opinion.
The images weren't even shared with Watson/Crick by Franklin but by someone else.
Twinlaw's father is a super famous electrical engineer, retired professor emeritus with hundreds of papers (often as first) published author.
Be careful asking him about anything "he's published" since the mid-90s — because he often won't know anything about the topic. Instead, some grad-student lists you first to draw publicity to his own subordinate PhD / thesis.
After inventing a monumental concept in EE microchip design, you can just sort of rest on your laurels, just because of your name recognition (with permission, of course).
But after myself dropping out of grad school, decades ago, I've shared many lazy whiskeys with former colleagues, contemplating the "what if"s of two traveled old men. I regret nothing but happily engaged laziness.
> Graduate students aren't cited for coming up with innovations
Nonsense.
> the controversy is valid,
No. You can see both publications right here [1]. Watson and Crick explicitly say they are aware of the "general nature" of Franklin's results, but they are the only ones in that issue to propose the double helix structure with the specific features that explained all of the evidence, published and unpublished.
[1] https://www.mskcc.org/teaser/1953-nature-papers-watson-crick...
> Nonsense
Well, I don’t know what to say except that you are wrong.
> No. You can see both publications right here
I appreciate that you have found articles to support your argument and encourage you to continue reading further.
Wait, I looked this up once. Wasn't Rosalind Franklin's paper published back to back with the two other papers in the same issue of Nature?
https://www.mskcc.org/teaser/1953-nature-papers-watson-crick...
Yes, yes it was: Watson& Crick on page 737; Wikins, Stokes, Wilson on page 738; and Franklin, Gosling on page 740.
The record WAS straight in 1953. I am so confused.
Ironically the "drama" narrative which was constructed much later making for a good story to tell could have been avoided right from the start.
Just three weeks after the publications in Nature (April 1953), a Time journalist Joan Bruce was made aware of the hottest story in science and described the discovery in her nearly publication-ready article (professional photoshoots of Watson/Crick were already taken, yes one of those pictures [0] was consequently prominently featured in The Double Helix 15 years (!) later) as a joint effort of two teams (Wilkins/Franklin & Watson/Crick) but the story was killed because apparently among other consulted scientists Franklin herself found the science lacking, it wasn't revised and subsequently no article was published at the time. No pun intended.
> Three weeks after the three DNA papers were published in Nature, Bragg gave a lecture on the discovery at Guy’s Hospital Medical School in London, which was reported on the front page of the British News Chronicle daily newspaper. This drew the attention of Joan Bruce, a London journalist working for Time. Although Bruce’s article has never been published — or described by historians, until now — it is notable for its novel take on the discovery of the double helix.
Bruce portrayed the work as being done by “two teams”: one, consisting of Wilkins and Franklin, gathering experimental evidence using X-ray analysis; “the other” comprising Watson and Crick, working on theory. To a certain extent, wrote Bruce, the teams worked independently, although “they linked up, confirming each other’s work from time to time, or wrestling over a common problem”. For example, Watson and Crick had “started to work on the double helix theory as a result of Wilkins’ X-rays”. Conversely, she wrote, Franklin was “checking the Cavendish model against her own X-rays, not always confirming the Cavendish structural theory”. It has not escaped our notice that both examples render Franklin in a position of strength, every bit a peer of Wilkins, Crick and Watson.
Unfortunately, Bruce was not so strong on the science. Her article got far enough for Time to send a Cambridge photographer, Anthony Barrington Brown, to shoot portraits of Watson and Crick, and for Watson to tell his friends to watch for it. But it never appeared, perhaps because Franklin told Bruce that it needed an awful lot of work to get the science straight. Bruce’s take on the discovery was buried, and Barrington Brown’s compelling images disappeared until Watson resurrected the best of them 15 years later, for The Double Helix.
It is tantalizing to think how people might remember the double-helix story had Bruce’s article been published, suitably scientifically corrected. From the outset, Franklin would have been represented as an equal member of a quartet who solved the double helix, one half of the team that articulated the scientific question, took important early steps towards a solution, provided crucial data and verified the result. Indeed, one of the first public displays of the double helix, at the Royal Society Conversazione in June 1953, was signed by the authors of all three Nature papers. In this early incarnation, the discovery of the structure of DNA was not seen as a race won by Watson and Crick, but as the outcome of a joint effort.
According to journalist Horace Freeland Judson and Franklin’s biographer, Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin has been reduced to the “wronged heroine” of the double helix. She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure.[1][2]
[0]https://wellcomecollection.org/works/s9z3dhkn/items
[1]https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01313-5
[2]https://x.com/matthewcobb/status/1650877656445988864
A puff piece on Crick from a guy who wrote a book trying to white wash Crick? What a surprise.
I believe that Rosalind Franklin didn't take the photo in question. My understanding is that it was done by her grad student, Raymond Gosling.
Certainly if we're arguing about giving credit where it's due, we should mention his name. Perhaps even put it in the headline?
> My understanding is that it was done by her grad student, Raymond Gosling.
Ah yes, this is why we all know the name of the person who proposed the original iPhone project! And also why the name of the researcher who first thought of GPTs is on everyone's mind (and why nobody can remember the name of the laboratory where the work was done)!
And it's why whenever we invent something on our employer's dime, the patent doesn't bother to mention the people who took the risk of supporting the invention.
Good catch.
These people are academics, their entire career and ability to get continued funding depends on getting personal credit for their work. That is entirely different from working for a private company.
> These people are academics, their entire career and ability to get continued funding
The people I'm referring to at Google et al. are also academics.
Graduate students, and even post-doctoral researchers, are not the ones cited for breakthroughs from a laboratory.
> Graduate students, and even post-doctoral researchers, are not the ones cited for breakthroughs from a laboratory.
What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work. Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author. They both get credit for their respective roles in a very tangible way that is usually the deciding factor in career progression. They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
Moreover, no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
Perhaps we're misunderstanding each other:
> What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work.
This is true in the sense of purported plagiarism, but not in the sense of citing who is 'responsible for the idea'. Review articles will often cite a senior article when describing work performed over time, even if the primary authors have changed.
> Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author.
This convention varies by field and is not universal. It is isn't even constant in all fields of biology
> They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
This depends strongly on where the work is done (even the department within a university)
> no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
The assertion about no academics in companies is not true at all—being an academic has little to do with where money comes from (if this were true, there were no academics at all in the 1700s, an obviously false statement).
Bell Labs, Google, MS and others have formal research institutes within their organizations. I agree that each has conventions around recognition, just like in other areas of research.
I’m still not quite sure what you mean by credit, perhaps you mean casually using the PIs name over the students in things like review articles and talks?
I’m an academic PI and when I was first getting started as an undergrad I had a falling out with a lab that had an abusive and toxic culture, and tried to publish some of my work without crediting me after I had graduated and left. I was able to contest the authorship and the journal actually changed the author list to properly credit me.
When there is an effort to “elevate people of type X” you have to suspect that some large number of those “elevations” are fraudulent rewriting of history. I immediately ignore the whole lot.
Peek just a little bit behind the curtain and it always turns out the controversy is fake.
Pretty much the normal version of history has been accurate for a while.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, you're right--I've seen lots of social media memes that basically say stuff like, "Einstein was an idiot, it was his wife that did all the work!" when that's patently a false statement.
But I also know that a lot of that sort of thing DID happen. Women, marginalized groups, etc., were written out of history on a regular basis.
The problem is, the issue requires nuance and intellectually honest discussion. And that doesn't exist when you're trying to create the next biggest clickbait article or meme.
Agreed.
I'm not sure at what point it must have way overcorrected. Most if not every single thing I was taught in school that a lot members of this group did/invented turned out to be an exaggeration or outright lie, I came to find out later.
Which is a shame, because most of their stories are interesting in their own right to have been properly explained. Now, instead of lifting anyone up, we're doing some weird dance of fighting back and forth about who is lying(and usually, the answer is both sides).
> Most if not every single thing I was taught in school that a lot members of this group did/invented turned out to be an exaggeration or outright lie, I came to find out later.
I think this (unfortunately common) impression comes from a misunderstanding of how scientific work actually happens. No one is working independently in their own labs and doing all of the work without help from anyone else, ultimately culminating in a Eureka! All of this work is collaborative, and recognition of individuals who had a particularly compelling insight or experimental result in this collaborative process is not a dismissal or denigration of anyone else who may have contributed.
> Women, marginalized groups, etc., were written out of history on a regular basis.
Written out? Or just not written in? There's a big difference. Almost everyone isn't written into history. But nobody cares about the white men who aren't written in because the people who are were also white men.
It's quite likely the next Einstein will be a man. But that doesn't mean that being a man means you're likely to be the next Einstein.
The problem is we are all obsessed with finding the very best people in each category whether it be science, sports, arts etc. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just what we're like. If you were going to read a memoir would you pick Einstein, or the janitor who cleaned his office?
It just so happens that many of these "top spots" will be occupied by men, for one reason or another. I can see that it sucks if there are no role models that you can relate to. It must seem like boys have all this potential and that's not fair. But 99% of them won't succeed, and that sucks too. The grass is always greener on the other side.
> Written out? Or just not written in? There's a big difference. Almost everyone isn't written into history. But nobody cares about the white men who aren't written in because the people who are were also white men.
I mean, not too long ago there was a very popular movement online about celebrating white man Nikola Tesla, who was seen as not being given his fair place in history for his discoveries. People love a perceived underdog.
> It just so happens that many of these "top spots" will be occupied by men,
There’s no mystery. It is not a “just so happens.” It is misogyny that prevents women from being in these positions.
It’s writing like this that perpetuates this myth that a woman “probably” won’t be the next Einstein.
>It is misogyny that prevents women from being in these positions.
Malcolm, it's not 2010 anymore buddy. This isn't it. You're not even going to bait anyone with this shit nowadays.
Come on... It's 2025. If this were true you don't think by now at least one woman would have published her work under a man's name just to prove a point?
It takes a certain type of brain to be an Einstein. That type of brain is extremely rare in any part of the population, but it's exceedingly rare for women. It's not better or worse, it's just different. It's like red paint or blue paint. You don't have to rank one higher than the other, but you clearly do. Look inside yourself and ask why. If you want to make a difference you'd find a way for everyone to feel great about themselves rather than assume malice.
> When there is an effort to “elevate people of type X” you have to suspect that some large number of those “elevations” are fraudulent rewriting of history. I immediately ignore the whole lot.
A significant part of all credit in the world is assigned fraudulently, it is just a fact. It is because with credit comes prestige and wealth, etc. So humans generally seek it out and many lie about it.
I'm very happy that this view is getting some broader attention. In the abstract, it's no different than it's always been: history is written by the victors. The particulars are going to be era-specific, as you've noted. _Any_ ideology is going to have its blind spots and its convenient lies.
I think knowingly or unknowingly this person just summed it up - there was an effort(last 2-3 centuries) to elevate people of just one type (let's say X) and a lot of those were just fraudulent and now the effort is to elevate these other types (rest of the types minus type X) and a lot of these might also be fraudulent. So I think deliberately elevating a type leads to some fraudulence. It doesn't mean we should judge the types but that we should be careful which we should be anyway.
This comment is not going to age well. This is same attitude that everyone has had since recorded history. And they are regularly proven wrong. By either intention or omission history is rarely balanced and accurate.
I imagine rather than it’ll age like a fine wine.
And the harder the DEI wackos try to ‘balance the scales’ the better it’ll age.