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> This is what makes me somewhat feel that this focus on her is not quite fair.

Thought experiment: if you saw an article titled "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would you be commenting on how unfair it is to single him out? After all, he just designed the thing, a huge team of people built the software and the hardware that actually made it possible.

Yes, absolutely. I've made comments before to the effect of: I cringe hard enough to actually feel physical discomfort every time a headline refers to a team effort of SpaceX as "Elon Musk's Rocket."

Ok, how about "Turing: the genius that cracked the ENIGMA code"?

I would start by informing them that ENIGMA was actually broken by Poland, and they invited the British two weeks before the German invasions to show them how it worked and give them a prototype enigma breaking machine. They didn't want the technique and knowledge in how to break enigma to be lost after Germany invaded. The French also got a copy, and it was actually the French intelligence service that had gathered the initial data and it was unknown to them that this enabled the polish to break ENIGMA.

What turning did was to take the initial prototype they received and build a even more powerful and refined version. In particular he improved the technique so it broke the naval version of enigma which was more complicated than the army version that the polish had broken earlier. This was in part possible because the British had captured a working naval enigma from a German submarine.

(A lot of this comes a book called The Code Book by Simon Singh. The last chapter on modern ciphers is a bit dated but the chapters on enigma was quite good.

Well, other arguments aside, there is a little bit of a difference between a single-system ENIGMA and building multi-system spaceships.

Well since he founded and owns the company.. legally it would be his Rocket, would it not?

Does anyone here believe that rocket system would exist without Musk?

> Thought experiment: if you saw an article titled "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would you be commenting on how unfair it is to single him out?

Yes, and that’s what happens in each of those hyperbolic articles (that are mostly about Jobs, but same thing)

this is hard to say, tbh.

first: by alluding to Ive, you insert a gender component. i don't want to make this about gender - which is what happened itt. as mentioned, i think the difference in focus is because of geo-cultural reasons. another piece of evidence for this hypothesis comes from the following: over here, the EU also gets a lot of praise for providing the main chunk of the funding for the project. a quick check tells me that this detail is often omitted in US articles about the project. also, a note on myself: i work in a field where the majority of people are female. so is my boss. her work is great and i love working here. at the same time, i am aware that the bar to get here was higher for my female colleagues than it is for men. also, i see the glass ceiling having an effect on the careers of my sisters and my female friends. and i am painfully aware of the struggles that my mum and other women of her generation had/have to go through. so i consider myself a feminist, in the sense that i believe that we should have full equality and that we do not have it yet.

second: think iphone, i think jobs. so what "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would imply to me is that Ive is _the one person_ that had the biggest impact on the development of the iphone. i don't know enough about Ive to evaluate this. but here's the thing: if it turned out that another person contributed as much if not more than Ive, then i'd say: hey, it's nice that the article introduces Ive and gives him some credit, but let's not exaggerate and let's not forget about the other people who have also greatly contributed to the project.

edit: to clarify: i find it hard to say, because it's somewhat hypothetical. i truly hope for myself that i would react the same way / that gender has no impact on my thought process.

> first: by alluding to Ive, you insert a gender component

Personally, I want to say the gender component actually happened right about here:

>> Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person

We have interesting ways and subtext when we talk about people that show our biases. Actually beyond that the entire article isn't anything about asking Katie questions or how she came about her algorithm. It's more about her fast rising popularity. It's an article that says a woman did something without saying that. I'm not judging if that's offensive or merely a reflection on how we relay news given our society.

The title of the article reveals a lot about the biases at play here. "Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind..." - keyword 'the'. She isn't 'the' computer scientist behind it, she is 'a' computer scientist behind it. If it were merely a case of putting an interesting person with likable facial features at the heart of the story the news articles' titles and descriptions could actually be accurate. In actuality we have misplaced attribution caused by the biases of the news media. Whether they're political or not, its easy to see through them and it adds an unnecessary off-note to the otherwise interesting scientific achievement.

EDIT: it looks like the title of the article has either changed or SEO causes some to see different titles than others. Regardless my initial comment should still be valid.

The fact that you are making it about her appearance instead of her scientific achievement is you, my dude, not the article and not the media. She is first author, she came up with the algorithm, she did this thing, and all your attempts to belittle that just prove Joanna Russ’ absolute correctness.

Actually her appearance is relevant to the discussion at hand, within the context of this specific thread. There is no belittling going on here.

I would, it's just like Steve Jobs being a* hole while taking credit for everyone's work. In those cases it's a result of hierarchy in this case it's a case of the media looking for a media darling for their story. In either case it's not painting reality correctly. That being said it's not her fault and she should be proud of her accomplishment. It's the media which likes to paint pictures of reality like this, to single out a single person to take credit for what a team of researchers did or what a corporation did.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I disliked the guy after hearing how he was promoted.

Make a BBC Horizon story about how he came to his best work and about him. That's cool. But to frame it as just being him and not the others behind the work.. it's nothing but hero worship.

Yes - this is a constant peeve of mine. Stories are so much more powerful if there's a single inspirational character, but that's rarely how these types of scientific projects or development efforts came to fruition - especially in Jony Ive's case.

People do that all the time when everything Apple gets attributed to Steve Jobs.

Jony Ive actually was truly essential to the work behind the iPhone, so it wouldn't be unfair to single him out.

I hate it when news outlets and movie production companies focus on individuals and ignore the team effort and dynamic, and it's not because I care about distributing credit. I want them to tell more stories about teams and communities working together to build things, not more lone genius stories.

I get it. I truly do.

But consider the context: This picture of a blackhole is going around along with an iconic picture of a woman with a ton of hard-drives that resembles the iconic picture of Margaret Hamilton with a stack of papers. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who knows little to nothing about this project. What questions do you think people have?

Headlines have to create irresistible questions that lure people in and this one is using the tried and true "Who's this genius?" formula.

Once they've grabbed this casual reader (see headline), they're not going to dive too deep into the project. This isn't serious science journalism, this is a human interest story in the science section.

Why did they pick her? Because she lead the team and was a key figure in conceiving and implementing the algorithm. Because she was already the face, spokesperson and active promoter for this project. Look at her TED talk from 2017.

I get it. Tons of people deserve credit. More importantly, the story of how this team collaborated should be told. But that's not what this profile piece is about.

But let's get serious. You're critiquing the accuracy of a very casual profile piece for average readers. Most of them really don't care what statements are slightly hyperbolic, they just want to understand the gist of the project and her role.

The ironic thing is that this seems to be a case when someone doing the science gets to represent the project and get credit rather than just institutions and senior researchers.

> Margaret Hamilton with a stack of papers.

That was used to say "well women are doing something very important" (If we're truly focused on equality should be yes.. that is normal.. but why is that important to advertise that message)

The feeling that I'm getting from all of this is that the result is showcased to the side and they're trying to make her into a celebrity. I would love to hear her praise "her team" (her team is a subset of people in the whole project) Although, I don't think she has enough experience to realize that it's a good thing to do. (That's something you get from working in teams outside academia)

If you go to the moon, you don't just praise the one guy who did it. You bring the whole group of astronauts who went and did something. If they're smart they're going to admit that there were a ton of people who helped.

EDIT-Update on the comment about the team praise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638629

> I would love to hear her praise "her team" (her team is a subset of people in the whole project) Although, I don't think she has enough experience to realize that it's a good thing to do.

She did that in the TED talk. And in the article linked above. And basically everywhere else she's spoken.

Oh.. I had no idea. That's awesome. I made the assumption that she did the academic thing which is "i did this" signed advisor. The assumption was based on the focus of the articles. (editorial bias)

No need to avoid your own responsibility and bias in making that assumption. It's not accurate to blame it on the media coverage alone. Strikes me as more like confirmation bias around what your expectations are for academics, women, or both.

Excuse me?

I admitted that I was incorrect in my impression. I could have deleted the original comment but posted an admission that I was too quick to jump to conclusions.

You should be aware of what the media is trying to say, and how it's presented. This comment section is showing how different countries are presenting the same situation.

Confirmation bias in academics:

It's very common to escalate the work from undergrad->grad->postdoc->professors. (Doing the most work to the least in that order). It's pretty terrible.. but that's how it operates. Does the advisor do much? Do they get their name on the paper, yes. (In many times at the top)

Women- Her gender doesn't matter on this. The work she did for her research is awesome, it's clearly her work. (It's similar to super-resolution) This wasn't a single I just applied my algorithm and everything happened. Lots of people were involved in collecting, cleaning, managing, and adapting her improvement to existing CV algorithms to reproduce what a blackhole looks like.

Not arguing that you didn't admit the assumption was incorrect ... Just that in saying it was based on the editorial bias in the articles you're ignoring your own participation in making the assumption.

You admit you were too quick to jump to conclusions: but I'd argue you were quick because those conclusions "seemed right" based on your own biases. I dunno. Maybe your statement "Although, I don't think she has enough experience to realize that it's a good thing to do." didn't have anything to do with her being a woman and it's just a coincidence that women struggle with being seen as less experienced than their male peers. It just came across to me as a really patronising and insulting thing to say, and hard thing to blame on the reporting of others.

From the article:

> But Dr Bouman, now an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology, insisted the team that helped her deserves equal credit.

> The effort to capture the image, using telescopes in locations ranging from Antarctica to Chile, involved a team of more than 200 scientists.

> "No one of us could've done it alone," she told CNN. "It came together because of lots of different people from many different backgrounds."

> "We're a melting pot of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, and that's what it took to achieve something once thought impossible," Dr Bouman says.

I'm going to edit the parent comment to show my response to that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638629

Next time, just don't comment if your contribution is to cast doubt on the experience and intentions of a woman based only on your bias.

I don't selectively cast doubts on the experience and intentions of a woman because they are a woman. That would be sexist.

The suggestion that people should avoid casting doubt/criticism due to a person's gender is sexist.

"I don't think she has enough experience"

You see how sexist that assumption is, right? Don't be that guy. Give her the benefit of the doubt you'd give a male researcher.

In the 2 comments you made to me, you're assuming my premise is to criticize her over her gender.

My comment would have remained the same if Dr. Bouman identified as male. The age of an individual when they get their PhD is somewhere around 27-29 (depends on when they start grad school.. it's usually about 5 years) People with more experience realize it's better to work and recognize the team rather than not. Kids fresh out of school just don't have that experience.

I don't understand how "the woman behind the first black hole image" is hyperbole. She's a woman and she's behind the first black hole image.

I don't think anybody truly believes that taking images of black holes is a one-person job. And the title doesn't imply that. Neither does the next, boldface paragraph in the article:

> A 29-year-old computer scientist has earned plaudits worldwide for helping develop the algorithm that created the first-ever image of a black hole.

Immediately followed by:

> Katie Bouman led development of a computer program that made the breakthrough image possible.

The problem is with the article "the". She's one of many people behind the first black hole image.

It doesn't say "A woman behind", it says "THE woman behind". Big difference.

I agree. She's said many times she wasn't the only one involved and it's really a team win. The issue is that the media likes to have one winner and she was it. It's another version of the media dumbing down science coverage.

It's not dumbing down science. Is making science relatable to an audience that otherwise would not care much about an image of a black hole. Having a "hero" in a story serves a purpose (many purposes, in this case) and it happens in every single field you can imagine.

Is that sport player really a star os is he/she a star because he has an amazing team that creates the opportunities for him/her to stand out?

Is this law championed by a politician really his/her idea or does he/she have a team of advisors that helped shape it?

Nobody lives in a vacuum. There isn't a single person, dead or alive, that has accomplish anything of importance without the help of others (knowingly or unknowingly, wether directly or indirectly) but at some point you have to take that for granted, to a certain degree, and focus on the figure that drives the enterprise, or makes a new discovery thanks to previous ones, or leads a team, or publish a paper.

It's not media who loves to have a winner, in any case. It's all of us, and the media obliges because it knows that a story with a hero is better told and better heard. It just happens that for some reason, in this case, having a hero seems to be unacceptable for some and I can't quite put my finger on why...

You're wrong, she did most of the work on the algorithm to make this work: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.01413

> However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came about.

It doesn't say that though. It says she was behind the image. And as I understand she lead one of the teams responsible for creating the image from the data. So I don't think that is particularly inaccurate as far as headlines go.

From the article:

"But Dr Bouman, ...insisted the team that helped her deserves equal credit."

my criticism is not aimed at her at all - but at the media.

and yes, she emphasised this elsewhere, too, which imv shows what a great and humble person she is.

Every media article I've read cites her team-credit emphasis.

What more should the media do? "Faceless, nameless team does X, No film at 11 in case that might make someone look like they're getting too much credit."?

Every team has a leader (de facto or otherwise). Having one voice, one face for a globe-spanning team effort is the way the media can convey the amazing, awesome message to the masses in a relatable way.

> Every media article I've read cites her team-credit emphasis.

But that is the problem, actually. Simple question: Is Prof Bouman the team leader that held all this together?

In answering this, consider this is from the ERC website, which is the major funding body of the project:

> Since 2014, this six year research project is being carried out by three lead scientists and their teams; namely Professors Heino Falcke from Radboud University Nijmegen (also Chair of EHT Science Council), Michael Kramer from the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, and Luciano Rezzolla from Goethe University Frankfurt. [0]

So to answer "What more should the media do?", my guess would be: at some point, mention Falcke, Kramer, and Rezzolla? And the ERC?

[0] https://erc.europa.eu/news/eu-funded-scientists-unveil-first...

> Simple question: Is Prof Bouman the team leader that held all this together?

Why does this bother you so much? What do you lose by her getting credit? Or anyone? What actual harm is it doing?

People generally value fairness and crediting people unfairly goes against that. If it appears to you that other members of the team might have contributed just as much or even more but weren't credited accordingly, then that goes against this "instinct", and why shouldn't it? You're missing the point, the question is whether she was unfairly credited or not.

Meanwhile, capitalism is wholly predicated on unfairness, where the "haves" exploit the "have nots" to get as much for themselves as they can.

Why does a woman getting "credited unfairly" strike a nerve when it happens every day that a CEO takes singular credit for an entire corporation worth of people's work with no "Unfair credit!" reaction?

Exactly. I can take so many examples but one that comes to mind.

The so many articles you read about Steve Jobs and the iPhone.

Did you once say/ask “it was not just Steve Jobs. It was a whole team of people who created the iPhone”?

The media and the public in general give him the credit because he led the team that developed the iPhone.

The first man to walk on the moon. He couldn’t have done it without a whole team of people working before, during and after they landed. Most of the media does not go into detail when they write stories about it.

It’s silly to say that everyone on a team should be mentioned by name in every article that comes out about an accomplishment.

This is easy peasy elementary stuff my friends: two wrongs don't make a right.

And, yes, I personally do speak out when CEOs and such take credit. [The Google Android project head is one example from recent memory].

interacting with the outside world must be exhausting with its naturally undeconstructed appearance and operation.

my criticism is not...

i mean, is it even really "your criticism?" why aren't you giving credit to others who are speculating the same issues? you're basically saying you're the first person to ever think this, did you even search for others or are you content in helping them to toil in obscurity?

Just like the Portuguese scientist involved is getting more coverage than her here in Portugal. It's just natural I guess. People want to find someone relatable.

One difference is that you're all Portuguese in Portugal. But they are not all women in the US or whatever and they will react if they sense "unfairness". There are no (substantial) non-Portuguese in Portugal to react!

Yes won't someone spare a thought for the men

No one would read that story. No one knows Katie Bouman. Everyone knows the blackhole.

You're thinking like a programmer. Think not like a programmer and then explain why the original headline is better.

Why was the article written?