[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.

[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.

[aruanan]

I'm reading an interesting book by Anne Sayre called Rosalind Franklin and DNA. There is one particularly good chapter where in the space of a few paragraphs she juxtaposes the text of RF's 1951 presentation of her research on the structure of DNA attended by Watson, RF's handwritten notes from that talk, Wilkins's comments, and Watson's comments on this from The Double Helix. It's clearly evident that she knew exactly what she was about, that Watson has expended a great deal of effort in The Double Helix to minimize her contribution, to downplay her ability as a scientist, and to impugn her character by describing her as a flightly, emotionally overwrought and dangerous woman.

At this point I'll say with respect to Wilkins and Watson's role in all this that I'm leaning toward "scum-sucking rat bastards". Later, I'll post these excerpts.