You're viewing a single thread.
She was on one of the teams that did if I remember correctly. I believe they split up into three teams and developed algorithms independently from one another. What surprised everyone was when they came back, all three teams had more or less the same image. It’s been a while so I may be wrong on some details. But it wasn’t just her is my point.
The media loves to make single people heroes because it's easier to sell.
I think in reality, nobody makes anything alone.
It's the hero myth that came to life at the time of Beethoven, of a misunderstood genius. Yes that guy was pretty good at what he did, but it was simply that he got progressively deaf and couldn't socialize with people anymore.
From that to marvel movies stereotype of one man prodigy and media idolizing individuals with sob stories.
Look at Nobel prizes in science, they're often multiple names, and behind each names there's countless decades of graduate students contributions and their teams.
It's even older: The myth of individual excellence is at least as old as the phenomenon of a distinct class of a warrior aristocracy. All throughout history, you'll see the elite (as most historians and poets were, because a peasant working for subsistence doesn't have the time to write deep musings about that time he got conscripted for war and stood in a line with all the other common peasants) writing of this or that great general or warrior, despite most of just about everything being done by groups.
You might know about the great heroes of the Iliad, excelling in battle by taking down a key figure of the opposing side, but most people probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the mass of "common" infantry on either side, let alone about the servants carrying the hoplites' stuff.
You might find a lot of medieval works focused on the glory and honor of a knight, but the (comparatively) poor spear-and-shield conscripts receive attention mostly in official documents detailing the way their army was to be raised (see the section "Ninth-Century Rohirrim" here).
Even when thinking about heavy cavalry charges, for the longest time I never gave much thought to the value of coordinated cohesion between them. The knights' charge is still a group effort, where an isolated warrior - great hero or not - would be doomed. And while we may be aware that knights had a squire, the rest of the retinue wouldn't be clear to everyone:
Clifford Rogers notes one (fictional and lavish, but not outrageous) war party “suitable for a baron or banneret” included a chaplain, three heralds, four trumpeters, two drummers, four pages, two varlets (that is, servants for the pages), two cooks, a forager, a farrier, an armorer, twelve more serving men (with horses, presumably both as combatants and as servants), and a majordomo to manage them all – in addition to the one lord, three knights and nine esquires (C. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives through History: the Middle Ages (2007), 28-9).
(Citation copied from this entry of the same blog as before)
Ever since there has been an elite with the leisure to write and document, served by a lower class who didn't, there has been a tendency to emphasise these elites' individual value and omit the group effort of all the invisible people contributing to that value.
I don't know if that is the cultural inspiration for the modern trend of focusing on single individuals or simply a symptom of a similar cause, but there is a certain resemblance that I suspect isn't pure coincidence.
She was even quote vocal about it not just being her work at the time
Cute woman doing cool science stuff is a more engaging story though
That doesn't mean she was not important, just that she's modest. Good for her and her team!
For the number of times women were straight up erased from their scientific achievements I think we can keep choosing them to represent the team for a bit.
This. Men got so angry when this story dropped and took personal offense to the fact a woman did something important and valuable. The amount of times women have had their work stolen and taken credit for by some bro far outweighs the recognition.
Or maybe attribute everyone equally - regardless of gender / sex, since that doesn't matter to what they do? You don't fix injustice with more injustice by skipping the contributions of other teams and only singleing her out.
Science is teamwork, but the contribution of different team members is usually not all the same. There's no way for us to know who did most of the important work. We have to put trust in the team that they chose their representative fairly.
You replied to the person explaining this and ignored all of it - she was one out of 3 teams, each using different methods to arrive at the same conclusion. They simply made a photo of her when she got a result and was excited. They didn't "choose a representative". She said "everyone deserves the credit". So why are you pushing this, instead of saying "all the teams deserve credit and this is a cool photo"?
I do think the other teams deserve credit as well, just like her team does. I thought it was discussed whether it was right for her to represent her team.
Also, the fact that there were 3 teams doesn't mean we cannot celebrate the happiness of one of their leaders.
I'm fine with this.
As long as the team gets recognition in the more formal documents then let the media have whoever they'd like.
It's like doing set up for a show. Let the headliner be the focus but acknowledging the people who made it happen is really nice.
Definitely, I've not heard of any shenanigans with their paper. So they still get credit. It's just not a media headline.
It's almost never just one person, science is teamwork, but that doesn't mean she's not an excellent scientist and project leader worthy of the buzz surrounding her research. Let's let her have the spotlight she deserves.