Rosalind Franklin

[ardcarp]

Roalind Franklin is the subject of today's In Our Time. One of science's undervalued persons?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rzm9y

[gradus]

Roalind Franklin is the subject of today's In Our Time. One of science's undervalued persons?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rzm9y

Was there a little more tension between the contributors than is usual?

[french frank]

Was there a little more tension between the contributors than is usual?

Expand a bit on that, gradus?

[Bryn]

Expand a bit on that, gradus?

I have only just caught this. I think the issue was that about scientific method. Franklin following more the Popper version, and Crick and Watson more after that of Feyerabend.

[french frank]

I have only just caught this. I think the issue was that about scientific method. Franklin following more the Popper version, and Crick and Watson more after that of Feyerabend.

Thank you, Bryn. That has opened up new horizons I liked this comment in what i take to be an Idiot's Guide:

"So if your preference is for Feyerabend over Popper, astrologers might be on to something, after all."

[Bryn]

Thank you, Bryn. That has opened up new horizons I liked this comment in what i take to be an Idiot's Guide:

"So if your preference is for Feyerabend over Popper, astrologers might be on to something, after all."

Hi frenchie, you might find this of interest. I nicked the link from the comments section of the Liz Williams piece you linked to.

[JimD]

I don't think the distinction is quite so sharp, or that the notion of falsification is any kind of methodic/epistemic breakthrough. Indeed did I not read somewhere ('Conjectures and Refutations'?) that Popper construed it mainly as an ethical stance?

[vinteuil]

.

... this may offer some light -

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368115000266

.

[ardcarp]

Just to say that if you listen via the podcast, there is some additional discussion which didn't get broadcast. The vibes I get are that one panel member put a slightly more feminist slant on things while the other two said that RF would have wanted to be remembered as a scientist regardless of her sex.

[jean]

I haven't heard the broadcast yet, but surely the feminist point is that she almost didn't get remembered at all!

[duncan]

One of science's undervalued persons?

Not by her alma mater, who give her equal billing with Maurice Wilkins.

[Bryn]

Not by her alma mater, who give her equal billing with Maurice Wilkins.

And let's not forget the EPSRC's new research institute.

[french frank]

Was there a little more tension between the contributors than is usual?

I had difficulty in detecting this. I did sit up when one contributor expressed disagreement, but in the end it didn't seem too significant. There's no doubt she didn't get the credit she deserved, though this was surely due in part to her very early death, before much public recognition could be expected. And then the world moved on …

[french frank]

Not by her alma mater, who give her equal billing with Maurice Wilkins.

The IOT contributors weren't far from suggesting that, had she lived, it would have been Franklin, and not Wilkins, who was awarded the Nobel Prize.