zlacker

“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.”

This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and constantly look for better ways.

>>prepen+(OP)
...and here we go again.

What was, or at least felt, obvious was that there was a double standard being applied. Not just in the sense that such a witch hunt would be unlikely to happen to a man being lauded. But also that if there's one point that Hacker News could probably agree on it's that lines-of-code is a bad metric for evaluating programmers, let alone scientists.

There was also the pervasive sense of being on the side of the rest of the team, even though highlighting their contribution was the first thing Katie Bouman did. And at least Andrew Chael, who did write the plurality of the code in the GitHub repo, did come out strongly in favor of her and was horrified of the hate she got. Quote:

"So apparently some (I hope very few) people online are using the fact that I am the primary developer of the eht-imaging software library to launch awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend Katie Bouman. Stop."

(https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/111651854496183091...)

It's curious that, at least in my subjective impression, the tech community has a far larger problem with women than any of the other groups that have traditionally suffered discrimination: racism and especially homophobia really are extremely rare, at least overtly. But the uglyness Katie Bouman, or Ellen Pao, or Marissa Meyers brought out seems to be alive and well.

>>prepen+(OP)
Code critique has a time and a place: a PR (or equivalent) where you were solicited or it is your role to comment.

Outside of it it's just mostly unwelcome noise. If you have a suggestion then do the PR and get your code reviewed in the same way.

>>prepen+(OP)
The reason people were trawling through her Github contributions and comparing them to other members of the team she worked with, and then posting about lines of code as if that's a measure of the value of someone's contribution to a project, was absolutely to undermine her work and show that she wasn't deserving of credit (despite the fact she was repeatedly quoted saying it wasn't all her and that it was a team effort).

When that story was on the front page it was one of the few times I've thought about leaving HN. It was embarrassing.

>>IfOnly+k
If a man received personal acclaim for a discovery, and someone looked at the repo and found that someone other than the man wrote most of the crunchier code, then yes I'd evaluate the acclaim for the man the same way.

Note most of the acclaim aimed at the scientist, rather than the team, was from the media. Whom as usual, likes to omit their own role.

>>nailer+C
But would you ever go and look at his repo?

If it is the case that she didn't contribute the most complicated stuff, then I can assure you it is not the first time in history that the face of a project is not the one that did the hardest work. Also as has repeatedly been said, she always said it was a team effort.

This is all said with the caveat that I didn't follow this 'controversy' and never cared to look at the contribution distribution of all the project members.

>>nailer+C
But far more commentors do this kind of hyper-scrutiny for women than for men.

>>moccac+h1
> But would you ever go and look at his repo?

No. But if someone else checked the repo, I'd be interested. That said the media would be less likely to publish 'this young man took a photo of a black hole'.

> Also as has repeatedly been said, she always said it was a team effort.

Yep. Also mentioned in my comment you're replying to.

I think of this conflict as 'developers versus the media' - the media having pushed the narrative of 'a young woman who took a photo of a black hole'.

The media (who like to remove their own influence from discussions) have turned it into 'sexist developers vs young female scientist'. They've been very successful at doing that, yet again, because, well, they're the media. It's easy to shape a story when you control all outlets deemed noteworthy enough to cite.

>>nailer+32
> because, well, they're the media.

And because, well, it was true ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I. So even if you disagree with the characterization, it certainly wasn't just the media, but also your fellow developers. It was a shameful moment (one of many, most of a similar kind) for HN that reflected horribly on developers, and the media called it up on that, as they should.

>>onion2+w
It was an overreaction which, however, was only enabled by absolutely lazy journalism. They basically took Bouman's Facebook post with a photo of her smiling next to the black hole claiming that she produced the picture, blowing her contributions way out of proportion. Some reports corrected this later that day, but by then, the shitstorm and investigation had already started. Perhaps understandably--she did not produce the picture. One could argue that Bouman's reaction was also way too delayed and she did not enough to clarify the situation, but this is perhaps understandable assuming she did not follow social media very closely.

The entire fiasco was mainly caused by the obsession of the media to put women at the forefront.

>>pron+14
> because, well, it was true [...] Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I

What you’re saying here is: because the opinion of me and my friends is objectively correct and yours is not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>onion2+w
She was deserving of credit.

She did great work, and so did dozens (hundreds?) of others on that project.

She wasn't deserving of the level of credit that the media gave her when they cast her as the star, visionary, and quasi-leader of the whole enterprise.

Nobody was ever against Katie. They were against the way the media handled the story - by slanting the story to advance a political agenda that had nothing to do with the discovery itself, and then calling everyone who had a problem with that sexist while entirely eliding their own role in the controversy.

It was entirely a conflict between the media and the people calling out the media for obvious bias. As always, the media's response was to build a narrative where their critics were just trying to hurt [insert victim/victim group here].

>>read_i+x4
Whoever is "right", it wasn't just the media, but also lots of developers, who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly wrong to claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue.

Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

>>nailer+C
As a counterpoint, comapre that with eg. reaction to QuickJS, when it was announced. People did not know who's to be credited for most of the work (only that two people claim copyright in the code), but if you look at the comments, it's all praise for the better known name, Fabrice Bellard, and almost no mention of the other person.

People will praise who they want to, and will bother to verify, only if it disagrees with their prejudices in the first place.

There's also a difference if those prejudices are based on something like past achievements of the praised person, or on something unrelated, like being a woman.

>>pron+16
One could say the exact same thing except for the other position. Certainly there exist a number of journalists who think the media’s reporting on the topic was biased in order to garner more clicks and/or push an agenda, so it is wrong to claim Bouman just fell victim to sexists. Total non-argument.

>>read_i+87
One could say anything, but while it's unsurprising that women's achievements are highlighted because they are objectively a minority in a field that, like other fields, was shown to suffer from sexism in numerous studies, the response was different from when a man's achievement is highlighted, and that, too has been shown in studies. So I do think empirical observation is on my side as well.

>>pron+A7
Maybe the response is different because if a man’s achievement is highlighted, the fact that a man did it isn’t highlighted, which isn’t exactly the case for women (apparently a woman in the team suffices for an achievement to be credited to a woman), making these two kinds of articles about fundamentally different things: “X was achieved” vs. “A woman achieved X”. One of these is far more loaded politically and hence of course more likely to elicit strong responses. There’s no reason that indicates misogyny in any form.

>>read_i+pa
Studies show otherwise, and I think that the gut reaction of those who read that discussion also shows that at least some developers felt that way, if not in general, then at least in that particular case. Also, that women's participation in software has drastically decreased since the eighties to the point they're now a small miniority is just a fact, and so focusing on them is natural, if not justified. Various causes for outbursts of xenophobia and misogyny have also been studied, and no one thinks they're unexepected, but that has nothing to do with their actual nature. I always anticipate a "strong reaction" on HN when women are discussed, but I'm still saddened by it.

I could only recommend to the curious readers of HN, if they are interested and certainly if they think they should voice their "strong reaction," to try looking at the rather vast scholarly literature that research has produced over the past decades. It's not a matter of a difference of opinions among people with equal knowledge of the subject matter, but usually one between those who have more knowledge and those who have less.

>>pron+Eb
> Studies show otherwise

That’s a bold claim.

> the gut reaction of those who read that discussion also shows that at least some developers felt that way, if not in general, then at least in that particular case.

I can’t follow you here.

>>read_i+Zc
> That’s a bold claim.

No, I think this is the consensus scholarly view.

>>pron+sk
Wait: read_if_gay_'s claim was:

> ...because if a man’s achievement is highlighted, the fact that a man did it isn’t highlighted, which isn’t exactly the case for women (apparently a woman in the team suffices for an achievement to be credited to a woman), making these two kinds of articles about fundamentally different things: “X was achieved” vs. “A woman achieved X”.

You dispute that claim, and say the consensus scholarly view is otherwise?

>>pron+16
The media spun the story in the first place (the reductive 'a woman who took a photo of black hole') because stories of women achieving things generates clicks.

The media spun the story in the second place (the incredibly simplistic 'developers hate women') because the media dislikes people arguing with it and because sexism generates clicks.

>>nailer+2l
From my perspective the story is: some people on HN which profess to value knowledge, scholarship and professionalism and "reducing" things for the sake of simplicity, express strong opinions on a matter of which they know little, their behavior mirrors archetypical behavior studied in the literature, and then rage when they're "reduced" based on scholarship they don't know. This is too long, so I'd summarize it as "HN commenters stuck in a bubble of ignorance rage on a topic they know nothing about."

>>jlawso+G4
'Nobody was ever against Katie' is a bold claim not at all backed up by the thread or the harassment she received which was addressed by her colleagues.

It seems like rather than own up to the fact that yes there were people that were remarkably awful to her and attempting to downplay her contributions it's easier to just blame the media.

It's frankly disgusting.

>>pron+pZ
It's hard having a conversation with you as you don't seem to respond to what the points anyone is making when you write a follow up comment. What is the literature you're repeatedly referring to? HN and the scientist seem to be in agreement on the work not being that of an individual, why is that ignorant?

>>fzeror+Rk1
Okay, I'll retract "Nobody was ever against Katie" since clearly some individuals, somewhere, were. Of course there were people who were awful to her. In any controversy, some Internet weirdos are awful to everyone involved. That's how the Internet works today. It means absolutely nothing; it's not significant.

99+% of the people who were critical of that situation, including me, never did anything against Katie. I don't have numbers but I suspect 99% also had nothing against Katie opinion-wise either. It's entirely against the notion that one person should be selected for media celebration entirely based on their genetics. That's wrong, wrong, wrong and I'll argue against it proudly any day.

What's disgusting is the media's taking this insignificant background noise 1% and making the entire story about it, specifically in order to distract from the criticisms leveled against them.

It's about the constant refusal to even address the media's choice when they elevated her. A refusal that is still going on in this thread.

Was it right to elevate her like that solely because of her gender? Or did the media do a wrong?

>>nailer+WX1
I don't think anyone has ever claimed that it was the work of only one individual, and I'm referring to the literature (you can Google for it) showing that women face, among other kinds of discriminatory treatment, increased scrutiny. In other words, the reaction of some on HN (thankfully a minority, but a predictable and loud one) is a textbook case of sexism. Not recognizing that is not a matter of opinion but a simple ignorance of the scholarship on the subject.