Saluting the discoverers of DNA

Boston Globe ^ | 4/24/03 | Kevin Davies

[RJCogburn]

FIFTY YEARS AGO tomorrow, the British science magazine Nature published one of the most astounding scientific reports in history. James Watson and Francis Crick impudently informed the world that they had cracked the molecular structure of the salt of deoxyribosenucleic acid -- better known as DNA. The report included one simple black and white illustration, sketched by Crick's wife, of what has since become universally known as the double helix. The architecture of DNA resembles a twisted ladder that contains some 3 billion rungs labeled in a simple four-letter alphabet -- A, C, G and T -- that spells out the language of life.

[Diogenesis]

Watson and Crick stole the Photograph which led to their
STOLEN discovery.

They know it. The Boston Globe (ever they lying media it is) knows it.

Too bad the Boston Globe is sooooo low that lying remains more important than accuracy and news.

Watson and Crick are famous for what they stole from a Jewish woman they
savaged and defamed
as is their usurping academic cheating way.

[goldstategop]

James Watson has come out with a popular work on the discovery that changed our lives forever, titled appropriately enough, DNA. If the secret of life hadn't been discovered at the time 50 years ago, we wouldn't be making as much progress as we have to lead healthier and long lives. A dear friend of mine died due to complications from a rare genetic condition two months ago. Hopefully with continued research, being afflicted with such mistakes of nature will one day be a thing of the past.

[Diogenesis]

BOSTON GLOBE FABRICATES and DISTORTS as it ATTACKS AMERICA and OUR ALLIES

BOSTON GLOBE MINIMIZES SADDAM'S PRISONS [4/16/03]

BOSTON GLOBE FABRICATES FRONT-PAGE POLL [4/9/03]

BOSTON GLOBE FABRICATES FRONT-PAGE SLUR AGAINST US MILITARY [4/8/03] - FReeRepublic Exclusive

[aruanan]

Saluting the discoverers of DNA

And we should all take this occasion to consider just what "blueprint of life" actually means. DNA doesn't plan, doesn't direct, doesn't exert control on anything. It doesn't contain all the information that is needed for life; that is, it is but the recipe book a cell, either alone or in the context of a multicellular organism, uses to produce the proteins it needs for its ongoing operations. All the rest of the information necessary for life and needed to make use and sense of the DNA is contained in the ongoing functional, spatial, and chemical nature of the living cell.

[aruanan]

Watson and Crick are famous for what they stole from a Jewish woman they savaged and defamed as is their usurping academic cheating way.

Allegations without corroborating details are just gossip.

[billorites]

Watson and Crick are famous for what they stole from a Jewish woman they savaged and defamed as is their usurping academic cheating way.

I wonder if this is a reference to Rosalind Franklin who did the x-ray diffraction photographs that led to the understanding of the molecular structure.

People tend to forget that the 1962 Medal for Medicine and Physiology was awarded to three people, Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins.

It most certainly would have been divided four ways including Rosalind Franklin in the honor had she not died young in the late 1950's.

I know she was English, but haven't a clue whether she was Jewish or not.

[Diogenesis]

So true. Do a GOOGLE search and then read the books
on : Rosalind Franklin.
She did the crystallography of the irradiated DNA
(that is, Bragg diffraction patterns of the incident ionizing radiation)
which allowed Watson/Crick's defective modeling schemes
to suddenly solve the chase which was afoot then.

If you like math, science, truth and justice ---- read on.

Also, try to the see the recent NOVA expose' on this.

Have a good day.

[Diogenesis]

Yes. She not only got the diffraction pictures which diciphered the problem
but she also separated the wet from the dry DNA [which
superimposed two different images],
and she developed the mechanism to keep the irradiated DNA from being volatilized
even while being examined and getting very hot.

Her role was key. The Boston Globe was contacted by many people
after their last lying column on this matter.

But you KNOW the Boston Globe and how poor a barometer it is for accuracy.

[astounded]

You can say W&C "stole" the structure from Rosalind Franklin until you're blue in the face, but that would be untrue. That is revisionist history and smacks of some sort of jealousy or vested interest on your part. It is true that Franklin had diffraction data that W&C did not have. However, she failed, like Pauling and Corey, Frasier, and Furberg to make the huge intellectual jump to interpreting the data to fit the hydrogen-bonding between the proper tautomeric forms of the purine and pyrimidine bases, and the conformation of the phosphates, as the fundamental basis for the structure. W&C did that before anyone else did, using Franklin and Bragg's diffraction data.

Guess what, kids? That's how science works, building upon other's observations and data, to draw final conclusions, so take your prejudices and preconceptions elsewhere - that one's over and had been for more than 50 years. Grow up.

[DManA]

The Nova show exposed nothing. All the pertinent facts, including Franklin's contribution, were presented in the 1986 Jeff Goldberg movie "The Race for the Double Helix".

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/bio/apbio/Projects/dblhelix.htm

[DManA]

Franklin probably would have also been included in the Nobel but she had already died and Nobel rules do not allow posthumous awards.

[dark_lord]

Rosalind Franklin should have been credited for her work. Watson and Crick did "steal" her work by not citing her academically. If she had lived there would have been academic repercussions. And she would have received prizes along with them if she had not already died (from cancer, I believe.)

[aruanan]

Thanks. Yes, that does seem to ring a bell. However, a technician that is hired to do crystallography work generally stands in relation to the principal investigator and the work he has hired her to do as an engine mechanic in the pits stands in relation to A.J. Foyt.

In my thesis work on the properties of adhesion in cells expressing a particular neural cell adhesion molecule, I had posited a mechanism that should manifest certain characteristics in the way two adhering cells apposed each other. Some of the photographs I took myself on the laser confocal microscope in order to measure the distribution of the adhesion molecule along the plane of apposition as compared to the rest of the non-adhering cell surface by measuring the relative change in signal intensity in the membrane at and away from cell-cell contact.

When we wanted to look at the physical apposition of the membranes we had a electron microscopist make sections of the cells and take photos (electros, I guess) of adherent and non-adhering examples of expressing and non-expressing cells. I then analyzed the nature of the cell-cell contact in terms of length, average width, and types of contact in these different cells down through their plane of contact. Now, in the writing of the thesis or of an upcoming paper based on these results, the electron microscopist will be acknowledged in the same way that we gratefully acknowledge the use of a DNA construct or an antibody supplied by another researcher, but she won't be named as a co-author because she was someone we hired to do a job. We told her that we wanted a certain number of micrographs of these cells at a particular magnification in particular configurations. She did this. She facilitated our work by working for the electron microscope facility that is maintained for the use of the university since such an instrument is too expensive for any one lab to maintain and operate. But she didn't contribute to the design of the experiments or to the theory that led to the design.

Now, if Rosalind Franklin's work was in this capacity, that she made the X-ray micrograph which Watson and Crick then used to infer the double-helical nature of DNA, she should be acknowledged, but not in the form of the Nobel prize or even as co-author. If, however, she had showed them the results, had given them her interpretation of them--that they indicated a double helix structure, something of which they had had no inkling until she pointed it out to them (as opposed to their discovering it through the micrograph she made at their request), and they flatly discounted both the results and her interpretation and she had then, on the basis of their own theory, been able to mount a persuasive argument to convince them that they should accept her interpretation, she should then have been named as a co-author and been one of the Nobel Prize recipients. If they had said, "Yeah, that's nice" and then went on to claim her interpretation as their own, then they would have been guilty of theft of intellectual property.

[aruanan]

Thanks. As far as their "stealing" "her" work, it depends on the conditions under which she did that work. See #14 about this.

[aruanan]

Yes. She not only got the diffraction pictures which diciphered the problem

Pictures don't decipher problems. She had the picture but didn't decipher the problem. Someone else deciphered the problem using a picture which, according to astounded, she took but failed to understand. If I generate data which gives someone else a piece of crucial information to discover something that--though it was staring me in the face--I did not, then I am not a codiscoverer even though I was instrumental in someone else's being able to make the connection.

[Diogenesis]

I have no vested, or any other interest, except for hope that there will
eventually be ACCOUNTABILITY in politics and science and law.

Science should be ripe to be first, since math and time
(causality of "firstness" here) demonstrate truth indelibly.

Don't have time to argue with some of the above who are wrong,

such as Astounded.

This was more than "a technician did it". This was stealing from another laboratory.

[buffyt]

For the Boston Globe for slurring our military....

Open query...

 

"How many more thousands of Iraqis dancing in the streets as
Saddam's statues are pulled down would it take for the naysayers
to admit that they were mistaken?" --David Stolinsky

 

Think how many millions of lives might have been saved if the spirit of
resistance had been present from the very beginning. If the world had
dealt with Husseins a long time ago. 

 

To passively accept the tyrant's boot is to accept destruction.

 

"To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice." --Confucius

"How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a
poll in Egypt?" --Harry S. Truman

 

And how many nukes hitting USA would it take to ruin your whole day?

 

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/working/030411/ramirez.gif

[astounded]

NO - it was not "a technician did it" and W&C "stole" it. This seems again like professional jealousy or some sort of axe to grind. W&C cited Wilkin's work and interpreted Wilkin's data, in the context of Chargaff's essential determination of the GC:AT ratio of unity (a key bit that I think brought it all together for them). They came up with the dyad structure by taking into account the electrostatic repulsion of negatively charged phosphates to place them in an electronically permissible local environment, and assuming the proper conformation of the deoxyribose moieties based on van der Waals forces. No others put it all together, using all of the available data like W&C did. Science at work.

[ladyjane]

Not sure the Nobel can be be split four ways. I thought three was the maximum. In any event, it was Wilkins who 'liberated' her photograph - without her knowledge. Watson admitted that she had not given them her data. Crick said later that she 'must have known' they had it. Although her photograph was the basis of their work, neither Watson nor Crick acknowledged her in their acceptance of the award.