The saddest part is that Rosalind died of ovarian cancer at 37 years old, before it was understood how much X-ray exposure damaged DNA and could cause cancer. It's one thing to sit writing theoretical papers using other peoples' data and a totally different thing to be doing actual experimentation, arguably where the real science is at, which also carries the small chance of exposure to unknown hazards. Many people in the scientific community felt very strongly about how Franklin was treated. My parents were students in London in the late 1950's. Had I been female they would have named me Rosalind.

@inkedseahear

6 ай бұрын

I mean plenty of people (at least when I was dabbing in the research courses) do secondary data analysis, I don't think there should be a bias against those who "didn't do the experiment"

@enginerdy

6 ай бұрын

@@inkedseahearwatch the whole video. Her work got snaked. If she had been able to publish and they worked from her published work, that would be one thing, but they snagged it because she shared a lab with one of their collaborators.

@miloradvlaovic

6 ай бұрын

@@inkedseahear Yes, but that's reviewing and meta-analyzing, it's not really worthy of a Nobel prize.

@miloradvlaovic

6 ай бұрын

X-ray crystallography should be perfectly safe. Well at least it is today. Safer than a single X-ray imaging that is, and this says a lot.

@amazinggrace5692

6 ай бұрын

That’s very cool about the naming!

Yes as soon as you get into science you realize the complexity and the politics

@BlueSoulTiger

6 ай бұрын

I would broaden your claim by replacing "science" with "academia"

@zlm001

6 ай бұрын

⁠​⁠​⁠@@BlueSoulTigerI would replace “science” with “anything involving more than one human”

@BootyRealDreamMurMurs

6 ай бұрын

​@@zlm001i replace your "science" with "academia"

@TheInfectous

6 ай бұрын

@@zlm001 idk if I'd trust many people to be 100% honest in their diaries. there'd definitely be more than a few smeagol "it was my birthday present" moments going on.

@xSpArTiChRiSx

6 ай бұрын

Complexity and politics? I say talking monkey drama.

The fact that data that is based on public funding isn’t public is a bigger problem than the “stealing” of data.

@bosstowndynamics5488

6 ай бұрын

This is one of those areas where the concepts of "copyright" and "plagiarism" diverge. Publicly funded (and even privately funded in most cases IMO) should be open access/copyright free, but that research being publicly available doesn't give others the ethical right to use that research without proper credit (emphasis on proper)

@EinsteinsHair

6 ай бұрын

What data do you want that is not being publicly released? This picture was always planned to be released. Watson and Crick could have waited until after Wilkins and Franklin published their papers. Likely they still would have gotten credit for putting it all together.

@scepticalchymist

6 ай бұрын

@@EinsteinsHair No, they could not have waited. A discovery of this importance cannot wait. It's naive to think otherwise. Rosalind Franklin treated her research as it wasn't about solving the biggest problem in 20th century biology, while Watson and Crick instinctively knew this, and everything that followed is the logical consequence.

@shahnazstrishaikh

6 ай бұрын

Exactly. Every bit of technology that we use today was developed with government funding.

@OMGclueless

6 ай бұрын

@@shahnazstrishaikh "Every bit" is a stretch. Plenty of important technology has come from fully-private labs. For example, Bell Labs under AT&T and Xerox PARC both developed a ton of fundamental technology.

The Nobel Prize Committee has a poor performance record.

even ignoring the blatant lies about not being aware of her findings, it's hilariously scummy to put someone in the acknowledgements of a paper you wrote on the basis of data you stole from them in the same sentence as the man who helped you steal it. she's even listed AFTER he is. the gall!

@slappy8941

6 ай бұрын

Average scumbag academicians... 🤷🏻‍♂️

@churblefurbles

6 ай бұрын

She wasn't aware of her findings. There is a lot of modern day cope.

@drdala

6 ай бұрын

​@@churblefurbles "modern day cope" as if the concepts of plagiarism and improper citations are recent inventions lol. they accessed that experimental data illegitimately while claiming not to have known about or used it whether she made the actual discovery or not.

@scepticalchymist

6 ай бұрын

@@drdala If you make a discovery and don't publish your findings no one made the discovery and no one can steal it.

@drdala

6 ай бұрын

@@scepticalchymist you say that as if franklin and gosling's findings weren't published in the exact same scientific journal as the paper based on their research that refused to properly and accurately cite them.

while completely messed up - the silver lining is she's arguably more famous because of this controversy than being one of many Nobel prize winners that get hype for a few years and then go in a book with all the other names. there will be videos like this made for decades to come, giving her the recognition she deserves.

@theguythatcoment

6 ай бұрын

Because you are a normie, ask anyone who has any authority on biology and they'll tell you she had nothing to do with the discovery.

@bite-sizedshorts9635

6 ай бұрын

But we will forever know of Watson and Crick.

@churblefurbles

6 ай бұрын

@@bite-sizedshorts9635 Because they had the insight, she was a technician.

@Rzo139

6 ай бұрын

Not so sure about that. As the video says, she wasn't the first. And no one remembers those who came before her.

@judewarner1536

6 ай бұрын

"more famous" than who? I have been steeped in science and science history since the late 1950s, yet only became aware of this particular controversy in the last few years, because one of my daughters was particularly interested in the suppression of women's contributions to society. In developed nations, the educational attainments of girls and women significantly over match those of boys and men, yet when it comes to their presence in any hierarchy, they rapidly disappear from sight. The effects of patriarchy are characterised by extreme social inertia far beyond the relative abilities of the sexes. In many less developed nations, females are little better than chattels. To quote Professor Higgins, " Why can't a woman be more like a man?" This attitude presumes that, because of their nature, women have found their level and all is well with the world... it isn't!

This makes me realize that there is rarely any one super genius who discovers something all alone. It's just that one person or one team beats the other's to the punch. Somehow, I have less admiration for Watson & Crick. They were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Today, Rosalind Franklin is pretty well known as well.

@sojrnrr8368

6 ай бұрын

lucky or conniving and ambitious?

@prschuster

6 ай бұрын

@@sojrnrr8368 Yes, also conniving

@nickmiller76

6 ай бұрын

They were also "lucky" to be very very clever.

@JorgetePanete

6 ай бұрын

others*

@glennchartrand5411

5 ай бұрын

This is feminist propaganda. They worked out two different models for DNA without knowing about her research , they were about 99% done..but they were stuck. Someone mentioned her work to them , and they realized her research might show which of the two models was correct. So they contacted the intern Rosy left in charge of the research who let them see what they had. One of the photographs confirmed which model was correct. Her contribution was documented and cited in the study. They asked the committee to share the prize with her but she had already died of ovarian cancer and the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to living people. Then the Feminist feces flinging started ...

This is the best video recounting of the photo 51 controversy I've seen yet. In the 1970s I worked for Maurice Wilkins, as well as Aaron Klug and met Don Caspar. I also was lucky enough to meet with Ray Gosling and Alec Stokes when they visited King's to meet with Maurice. I had the opportunity to talk about Rosalind Franklin with the women scientists who knew her during her time at King's. Most of us felt that Brenda Maddox (Rosalind Franklin: Dark Lady of DNA) had done the best job of telling Franklin's story.

what amazes me is how this story starts out with many word by word facts i learned in school in physics and biology, then at the end questions what our next generations will learn in school that will be as common as the knowledge given at the start, i think this is the best writing i've ever seen in a science related video, i feel very inspired by this awesome work

@lilyrose4191

6 ай бұрын

Good comment! 🙂

@CubeItself

6 ай бұрын

@@lilyrose4191 ty!

@lilyrose4191

6 ай бұрын

@@CubeItself You're welcome!

This tells the story well. A classic example of the 'great man' fallacy in history. Remember what Newton said "I stand on the shoulder of giants", most are never named.

@notaspeck6104

6 ай бұрын

Reminds me of something Feynman said about how 'there are no miracle men'. There are people who absolutely represent the best/greatest potential that we as a species have (i.e. Einstein) but without the countless 'ordinary' men and women who work over countless generations then even the greatest minds can only get so far. Our greatest strength as a species really is our collectivity.

@seditt5146

6 ай бұрын

She was credited, they put 2 and 2 together before her, now everyone wants to "cancel" them for the great work and the great men they were. It was not stolen data and her drive to take all the credit while not being able to put it all together is and was her problem. She didnt play well with others and payed for it by being out paced by people who had a bigger clue about what she was doing than she did. This is all cancel culture bullshit

@notNajimi

6 ай бұрын

@@seditt5146can we leave the culture war stuff and buzzwords at the door please?

@-tera-3345

5 ай бұрын

And related to that quote, after Einstein published his paper on relativity he was asked if he stood on the shoulders of Newton, and he responded "No, I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell." There are many more people contributing all sorts of incremental advancements than is often recognized. (And as an additional note, it's actually kind of fascinating just how close Maxwell was to coming up with relativity himself like 20 years before Einstein. There's no telling what he may have achieved if he hadn't have died early.)

@MysticMonster7

5 ай бұрын

@@seditt5146its really sad how limited your view of the world is

Hi Tibees! This story has always been presented as kind of a mystery, who did what, was the image stolen while Rosalind was away, and, if so, by whom; and of course the many disparaging things Watson wrote or suggested about Rosalind afterwards. This is an excellent documentary; not only do you explain how the image was made and how to interpret it, but also explain the critical role this image played in Watson and Crick's work. I think that it was very helpful to expand beyond Rosalind into the many unheralded scientists who came before. Giving the Nobel Prize to the three scientists who happened to have enough pieces to reach a certain conclusion gives the illusion that they alone are responsible for this discovery--as if they had pulled it out of a hat--rather than that they happened to be the last of a long line of scientists/scientific work that preceeded them. It's sad to hear that Rosalind's work ar her next lab also contributed to someone else's Nobel Prize but, unfortunately, academia is rift with the confiscation of someone else's work, often from a graduate student by their advisor, without any credit given. A very interesting piece of history, very well told. 🦋

@sd247

6 ай бұрын

Yes Watson and Crick took the credit for Rosalind 's work, because a deceased person can't get the award. They should have given it to her family.

Nobel history is anything but noble. There are too many parallel occurrences that need to be corrected.

@rusu989

6 ай бұрын

Obama got one for peace just 2 months after the got in to office ( for what ? lol ) ; then proceeded to drop an average of one bomb every 20 minutes for the rest of his term LOL

@davidhoward4715

6 ай бұрын

@@rusu989 You totally missed the point, so we can assume you're a Trump supporter.

@rusu989

6 ай бұрын

@@davidhoward4715 I am a Trump suqqorter and I also wish Obama; Bush; Clinton and all their pedo-satanist-cabal-friends rot in jail.

lovinggg this format, above and beyond-- editing is awesome

This video is a gem How she shows the "architecture" built of the multiple contributors to DNA understanding Also how more comprehensive Franklin's understanding of DNA

Thank you so much for this. So many people I didn't know about, and a much more nuanced picture than I ever realized. Kudos!

This is great. This video broadened my perspective on a narrative I thought I knew. Thank you for sharing the fruits of your research!

WOW! Very thorough research on the cast of characters leading up to this structure!

Tibees, thanks for another enlightening video. Love your beautiful voice. I didn't know about the details of the DNA pic until I saw your video. Keep up the good work! 🙂

Toby, I love this new channel and I hope you make many more mini documentaries like these, at lease I understand them better than the math and physics. This DNA story was particularly interesting but the choice of background music was very distracting. Every time the brass in the orchestral part of this video played, I had trouble listening to what you were saying as it was a very similar frequency to your voice. For the other two videos on this channel you made much more complimentary music choices, especially the Tech Expo video (which was fantastic by the way) with the strings plus your voice track was louder. In my opinion you don't need a background track at all, you voice over is always excellent. Just some advice from another video editor who loves your work. :)

I cant express how informative this video is, a few months ago i worked on a school assignment about writing a timeline of the discovery of the double helix, now biology isnt my top science subject but i did find this particular topic really interesting, while reading through my text book, wiki and watching KZread as i wrote down the history i started to see some gaps and unexplained things, like how many people weren't credited as well as the fact that image 51 wasnt the first one taken of DNA, i didnt get to figure it out by the end of my work and felt like i didnt have the full picture of what actually happened until i watched your video, the history of unraveling the DNA structure is deeper than i thought (obviously proven by the video) but i think for someone trying to learn the full story now it would be completely summarized by taking a look at the overall history and then watching this video, thanks for making great content Tibee!

A great video. Thanks for putting it together.

So glad that you again are making science communication videos!

Very interesting video ! Thanks Tibees!

even the tinker toy molecular modeling was not unique to Crick and Watson. Watson acknowledged that they took inspiration from the American chemist Linus Pauling. Very nice video! I did not know a lot of the stories of additional people who contributed to this amazing breakthrough. Your lessons are deep but your presentation makes them accessible to a lay person like me. thx

I get it - proper credit isn’t always given. But science is done by a community, building on the work of colleagues and predecessors. Prizes are given to individuals, and tend to ignore the contributions of the community. I don’t think it’s necessary to undercut the importance of Watson’s and Crick’s work, though I’m glad you bring up the contributions of their colleagues and community, and especially Rosalind‘s work.

@thomaslai1381

5 ай бұрын

I absolutely agree with acknowledging the community of people who contribute to the success of one or a few researchers who would otherwise be regarded as the main instigators of groundbreaking research, it is exemplary both of academic integrity and a laudable humility. For this reason, while acknowledging Watson’s contribution to the eventual elucidation of DNA’s structure, I don’t think it should prevent his reputation from being significantly tarnished as a person who demonstrated no academic integrity at all. He knew his use of Franklin’s work was without her knowledge or consent, and subsequently maligned her character, presumably to justify his use of her work under the circumstances that he did. Watson deserves to be shamed for his caddish dishonesty, though he is due credit by posterity as a crucial figure in the discovery of DNA’s structure.

thank you to whoever did the CCs!

I think it is an overstatement to say that Franklin's work was stolen, but I also firmly believe that she absolutely deserved to share the Nobel prize for her critical contribution to revealing the molecular structure of DNA.

@normangoldstuck8107

6 ай бұрын

The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. She was dead by 1962 and Watson, Crick and Wilkins got it. Whatever prejudice there was against her was because she was Jewish and from a very rich family much more so than for being a woman.

@pauldorman

6 ай бұрын

@@normangoldstuck8107 Good point regarding no posthumous Nobel's. Not so sure about your speculation around reasons for any prejudices she faced. No question she would have had more than her fair share of assholes and institutional biases to grapple with, but I personally don't think it's possible to make any objective assertions about her personal experience.

@pauldorman

6 ай бұрын

Also intrigued to learn that Photo 51 was actually taken, according to Wikipedia at least, by her student Raymond Gosling! Doesn't diminish her contribution, but it goes to show that few great discoveries are made without the contribution of many individuals destined to be forgotten by history.

@normangoldstuck8107

6 ай бұрын

@@pauldorman Have you read "The Double Helix" by James Watson?

Very nice video. Great presentation and narration. Looking forward for mroe ;)

This is why you need ethics in STEM

@deyvismejia7529

6 ай бұрын

You need ethics in every field and every way of life

@nohbuddy1

6 ай бұрын

@@deyvismejia7529 Duh

I remember Crick trying to figure out what shape would make the xray crystalograohy result, and after trying and failing to solve it he thought of the double helix after dropping LSD

Btw some more historical context from Wikipedia: ---- According to Raymond Gosling's later account, although photo 51 was an exceptionally clear diffraction pattern of the "B" form of DNA, Franklin was more interested in solving the diffraction pattern of the "A" form of DNA, so she put Gosling's photo 51 to the side. When it had been decided that Franklin would leave King's College, Gosling showed the photograph to Maurice Wilkins[12][13] (who would become Gosling's advisor after Franklin left). A few days later, Wilkins showed the photo to James Watson after Gosling had returned to working under Wilkins' supervision. Franklin did not know this at the time because she was leaving King's College London. ----- It seems that her work wasn't so much "stolen" as it was not credited *enough*?

@Lonestar10443

6 ай бұрын

The creator of the video knows all of that. She has sexist bias in play

Right on. Thanks for sharing.

02:15 is this photo inverted (darker = more light hit film)?

Interesting story, I'm sure there are many other instances of people not receiving full credit for their work ...

@dielaughing73

6 ай бұрын

It happens every day on a smaller scale. A very common example is professors taking credit for their students' work. They may encourage a student to write up their research for publication, promising them 'lead author' status, but then often contribute some small element that's beyond the student's ability (a slight re-write or a sophisticated bit of analysis). Then, because they have the contacts in the publishing side, they submit the work under their name (with or without the student's consent or knowledge) and relegate the student to 'minor author'. It's a tale as old as academia.

3 papers on the same topic published back to back on Nature? Not possible now. Now every Nature paper is like 1 paper + a lengthy 2-paper-long supplementary material...

Unfortunate for Franklin but sadly not unusual. Look up Pulsars and Jocelyn Bell who discovered the pulsars but the Nobel Prize was awarded to her boss. Bell did the grinding work, made the observations, interpreted them yet was left out when the Nobel Prize was awarded.

My last highschool biology teacher told us about Dr. Franklin's work was important and how Watson and Crick stole* fame and credit from her to get the Nobel, he did not say that they were fraud biologists but rather how they used her discovery and lied about their method and source, that they did in fact understand and make discoveries based on her work. My professor that year was awesome in many regards, this is one of the things that stuck out to me in how he teached biology, he more than once explained we wouldn't retain most of the raw information about biology if he just pushed it on us to memorize, and he made us learn how the field works, the example of the stolen discovery of DNA structures was one of my first times I comprehended academic fields can still be competitive and hostile.

This seems to be the most sincere commentary on this matter. Honestly Franklin is very famous because of it whereas all the other people, like Gosling - their names I've never heard of. This shows just how misleading the general "knowledge" on attributing credit in science, and this case in particular, is.

A beautiful video. Thankyou

that's main channel stuff right there!

@jacobschiller4486

6 ай бұрын

It explores a science document, which corresponds to this channel's description.

3:24 Dr. Willoughby is a great lecturer and artist. I had the pleasure of taking a course she led.

0:25 CHILLS

Note that John Steinbeck is part of the group photo at 15:38.

This video is really helpful in making me remember the lessons we had in biology class : > subscribing for similar content in the future. Good work!

As an ex research lab tech, yes mentioned as acknowledgments in a lot of research papers but thats it☹️ Seen some original techs work (not mine) then subsequently credited for by an academic... "Sod 'em", haven't worked in a lab for 20 years.....just play jazz

Very insightful!

As far as I know posthumous nomination were only allowed if the person was alive in February of the same year. 1974 they changed it to October of the same year. Franklin died 4 years before the three being awarded the price, she never had a chance. There are other female scientists who were definitely overlooked for the Nobel price, like Lise Meitner. Edit: spelling. And to clarify with she had no chance, I meant that there was no way that she could have been awarded the price since she was dead.

@faithlesshound5621

6 ай бұрын

A Nobel Prize includes a large sum of money as well as fame and a medal. It would not make sense to give a cash prize to someone who has been dead for a few years.

@martinh.3058

6 ай бұрын

@@faithlesshound5621 exactly and even prior 1974 dead people couldn't be awarded the price if they died before February of the same year.

A fascinating story. Watson and Crick were working in Lawrence Bragg's lab at Trinity College at the time of that argument with Franklin. Bragg won his Nobel prize in 1915 for developing Bragg's Law, a governing equation behind crystallography. That 1915 Physics prize is the only Nobel shared by a father and son. William Henry Bragg developed x-ray equipment, his son developed the tools to analyze diffraction. Lawrence Bragg remains the youngest Physics recipient so far. Bragg was the one who nominated Watson, Crick, and Wilson for their Nobel. I would like to think Franklin would have been included in his nomination had she still been alive. Of course, I don't know. The story is interesting to me by accidents of ancestry. My mother-in-law was a Bragg and distantly related to Lawrence. My father-in-law was a Maddox. I'm told it's unlikely he was related to Franklin's biographer, Brenda Maddox - but I know both Maddox families originated in Wales. It can be a small world, sometimes.

There is a correlation here as to how and who are credited for things like Patents. Kind of like Associates and other Junior Researchers including a Department Head as part of the team responsible for a new discovery even though he was at arms length or further when the discovery was made. Engineering Mgrs and other C level types can be piled onto a Patent application even though they had performed no work or made any credible contribution.

Very well made video.

It's the eternal argument about who's contribution is more important - experimentalist or theoreist... still happening today.

As you grow up, the more you understand that things are rarely as simple as they seem, and that the Great People we've looked up to, were also, only human. As someone in research myself, I am unfortunately all too familiar with the competition, plagiarism and stolen authorship. I think the lesson we can all draw from this is to remember that while some people get the recognition, there's still so many worthy people behind an idea or great work, who may not have gotten the recognition for their worthy contributions.

Patents as well, can be very hierarchical.

a Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously. However, since 1974, if the recipient dies after the prize has been announced they can still be awarded it. She died in 1958 at age 38 while they got the Nobel Prize in 1962! Also they actually put the doubel helix theory together even if it was based on other's work.

@ArjanKop

5 ай бұрын

Actually, it was possible to award the prize posthumously before 1972. That happened twice.

I like very much Scientific Researcher Franklin. It hurts me that her contribution was so neglected. The material is also a lesson for all of us not to limit ourselves in emphasizing what contributions we had, but to see the shoulders that supported us.

Great video and you may enjoy the BBC drama Life Story (1987) on the discovery of DNA. However I think you under estimated the significant of Watson and Crick’s contribution to theoretical biology and even now they are not well recognised as a discipline. Crick and Watson’s paper highlighted the significance of the base pairing and how genetic information can be encoded in a double helix and implicated how it might be replicated for genetic information to pass on to another generation. Knowing the structure was important but figuring out the implications and the foundation of genetic engineering is far more important. As Rutherford used to say it is all science is either physics (i.e. theory) or stamp collecting.

Great video.

As a modern lab technician, I can tell you that nothing really has changed. Things are just more formalized and legalized so that you know up front that you are not much more than walking lab equipment. You sign away any right you have to discoveries or ideas you might make in the lab. It's naive to think that the rest of the world isn't still like this. Socially awkward people are still sidelined. The same thing would have likely happened today but you'd never know about it due to non-disclosure agreements.

The photo was actually taken by her PhD student Raymond Gosling who seems to have been almost totally forgotten about. After Franklin left, Wilkins became his supervisor, which is why he had the photo.

Great video!

Guess it is all part of the game. Some restraint may also spark competition, speeding up research.

This could go on the main channel.

Personally, I blame Jeff Goldblum. No, but seriously y'all have to see The Race for The Double Helix from 1987, Jeff plays Jim Watson, and to watch it all play out is fascinating.

Tibees^2 ?

The photograph of the winning goal, does not qualify you for a soccer medal... You can get a photography prize, at a separate event.

I've seen a smoothy look like that before it splashed out the blender

Kudos! Must-watch video! You could hardly do better in fifteen minutes to do justice to the science of this subject. This account of the controversies does pose some sticky questions: Who deserved the Nobel and why; did Watson & Crick steal research; what was the final piece of the puzzle; was Franklin was difficult to work with? But first, the visual explanation of the science was superb, of x-ray diffraction brilliant, as was the history of "those shoulders upon which they would stand," the previous discoveries upon which the solution was built. As to those sticky questions? Was photo 51 the final piece of the puzzle? Photo 51 was central to determining the structure, but not the final piece, which was Watson's modelling of the internal structure in support of Chargaff's base pairing, and is what proved revolutionary. X-ray diffraction effectively determined DNA's uniform external cylindrical and helical shape, but not the full internal structure. No one could imagine DNA carrying information, as its external structure was too uniform. Historically the consensus was that protein must be the information carrier. Protein is formed by a chain of 20 possible amino acids. Varying the amino acids in the chain could serve as an alphabet. Unlike DNA, proteins are twisty and lumpy as each amino acid differs in size and shape. Yet by the 1940's, experimental work pointed directly to DNA as the carrier of genetic information. How could DNA carry "lumpy" information if it is highly uniform in shape? Watson's trial-and-error modeling of this problem produced the final and biologically significant answer: Complementary base-pairing between the two strands of DNA, where each complementary pair together had the same basic shape and size! The inside was informationally rich and varied, with the sequence of bases rather than amino acids encoding the genetic information, while magically retaining the uniform cylindrical shape. The elucidation of the structure of DNA is THE milestone event in molecular biology, which today dominates our approach to biology; this is due directly to the understanding of its ability to store genetic information. Did Rosalind Franklin deserve a Nobel Prize? Unquestionably. Her work: defined or confirmed the major physical measurements of DNA; demonstrated conclusively that DNA was helical; identified the correct space group, from which the head-to-tail orientation of the DNA strands could be deduced; controlled the humidity finely enough to tease out the fact that DNA had two structures, of which the wetter B form was clearly biological. The humidity measurements provided the means to more precisely compute the density of the sample and narrow the number of strands to 2. She also deduced that the sugar-phosphate backbone was on the outside and the organic bases on the inside. She added more critical information about DNA structure than any other contributor before her. Was it controversial that she was not awarded the Nobel? No. The Nobel Prize committee has NEVER been awarded the prize posthumously to a scientist. Had Franklin lived, she would have been the best candidate for the award in place of Maurice Wilkins. For good or bad, the rules of the Nobel Prize are designed to fund leaders in their fields so they can continue and extend their work. Otherwise, the narrator's musings on the limitations of the Nobel Prize award were on point: There must be a better way to award scientific accomplishments than to select a few scientists from among the many who contributed. Was Watson & Crick's accomplishment worthy of the Nobel Prize? "All they did was to be the ones to finally wrap up all of the work that had been done by others into one package that made sense." The narrator's phrase here is unfortunate, as it leaves the impression that she thinks Watson & Crick merely tidied up loose ends, even given it was offered to support her contention that the solution was based on 100 years of research. Yet the answer is resoundingly yes. The internal structure of DNA they alone figured out is the key to its importance. The idea that they had done none of the experimentation is not disqualifying: many Nobel awards went to scientists who did not do their own experimentation, Einstein prominent among them. Did Watson & Crick steal information? Not directly, the quotes from Watson's book The Double Helix notwithstanding. Did Wilkins secretly share Franklin’s unpublished photo 51 to Watson? No. By this time Franklin had already taken a new position at Birkbeck’s college to research RNA, and had already begun handing over her research to Wilkins, including photo 51. It was his to show it to Watson. Wilkins later regretted doing this for his own reasons: He had started positioning his team to resume work on the DNA problem and was waiting for Franklin to finish up her summaries. As the narrator noted, Franklin had previously provided some of this information in a seminar Watson attended and published some of it in an MRC report. Not all of what she published later in Nature made it to Watson & Crick, who deduced some on their own, including the fact that there were 2 strands and that the sugar-phosphate backbone was on the outside. Even so, all involved were uncomfortably aware that they were at the ethical boundaries of scientific sharing. Perhaps a more interesting question is: What role did competition play? Linus Pauling had recently beaten out the Cavendish lab's effort to determine the alpha helix structure in proteins. 6 months before the DNA puzzle was solved, he published a proposed structure of DNA based on a modelling approach. It was wrong, but spurred Bragg, who did not want to lose out to Pauling again, to allow Watson & Crick to restart their effort to model DNA, which he had stopped earlier after complaints from King's that they were poaching. The competition to be first in science has always co-existed uneasily with the desire and need for collaboration and sharing of information. Both impulses inform this story, and add to the grey of ethical compromise that surrounds it. Was Franklin difficult to work with? In a word, no. Franklin had good working relationships in the labs she worked in before and after King's lab. What happened at King's? Franklin joined King's to research proteins. The director Randall was asked by his lead DNA researcher Wilkins to move her instead to work on DNA under him. Randall concurred, then made her the lead researcher on DNA, without ever communicating this to his Wilkins! Franklin was falsely told Wilkins had voluntarily given up the research. This immediately wrong-footed them both, and was never clarified by Randall. Franklin's offer letter from Randall, unearthed after she died, confirms this. She built directly on Wilkins' work and was given sole access to the best equipment and the world-class DNA he had acquired, along with supervision of the Phd candidate Gosling. Collaboration between the two was impossible due to this inexplicable deviousness. Franklin would only work with Gosling, who after her death thought that she may well have figured out the full structure herself with a senior collaborator like Wilkins, or even Watson. This opinion was widely shared by others, including Watson & Crick. It was this situation that contributed to Wilkin's description of her as the Dark Lady, and Watson's impressions of her as difficult to work with. The narrator offered two letters in the video to support the supposition that Watson campaigned to disparage Franklin. With these facts in mind the letters can be read in a much different light. One of the final ironies around this idea is that both Watson & Crick collaborated with her after the DNA solution was published, Watson in particular around her work on the tobacco mosaic virus, work she began by building in part on Watson's own previous work in on that subject. For those interested in a deeper dive around the discovery of the DNA structure, I would recommend several books. First and foremost is The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox, who wrote the best biography of Rosalind Franklin She showed a deep understanding of this history, particularly the controversies and the conflicts between the main protagonists: Franklin, Watson, Crick and Wilkins. After reading Maddox, I found it hard to think about this history as it is often presented, as a black and white morality tale with Watson wearing the black and Franklin the white hats. Second, The Double Helix by James Watson is a must-read. Watson's clear intent in writing it was to convey his candid impressions at the time of himself as a brash and immature scientist trying to solve a great puzzle. It was intensely personal, and not an attempt to write a perfect historical account. Many of those he wrote about felt he had treated them harshly, but sooner or later acknowledged that nobody was spared his sharp and often exaggerated opinions; he particularly did not spare himself. He routinely depicts himself behaving foolishly in a way most autobiographers avoid. It brings to mind the great autobiographies by Samuel Pepys or Benvenuto Cellini. Even Crick ("I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." is the first sentence of the book) much later acknowledged the impressionistic intent of the book and Watson's success at achieving it. I would recommend the Annotated and Illustrated edition, which is full of relevant clarifications and facts that both support and refute passages of the book. The third is The Path to the Double Helix, by Robert Olby, probably the best book to describe the science. The last is The Eighth Day of Creation, by Horace Judson, a rich and deep account of the beginnings of molecular biology, starting with the characterization of the DNA structure, which is full of the scientific and personal details of the main participants, including Gosling.

Nobel’s greatest mistake was stipulating that only 3 Laureates can share the prize. Modern science is done by big collaborations, and many scientists contribute to a single breakthrough. Luckily the Breakthrough Prizes recognize this, and for this reason I pay more attention to them.

Well done Tibee!

At 8:12 the opposite is written of what you say. 10:35 'Watson, Crick and WilKINS'.

Rosalind Franklin, Gosling, Chargof and others deserve posthumous Nobel Prizes!!!!

it's not really anyone's data. it's the universe's data. i think a bigger problem is the fact that public funding for research doesn't result in public knowledge. she should have 100% gotten awarded for her work, though. she solved THE problem getting in the way of understanding DNA. any entry-level chemist/biochemist could have read that data and come to similar conclusions upon minimal research and effort. the work had already been done, and those guys that got the prize for this were NOT the ones who did it.

does this count under the plagiarism theme of KZread over the past month? 🤔

@jessehammer123

6 ай бұрын

Yay hbomb!

New channel nice

Great job. I’d like your analysis at the end about rewarding just a very few at the expense of others. I do think you might have been overly kind to Watson and Crick’s and their 1 pager, given Franklin’s earlier helical paper.

Danke für die Rehabilitation von Mrs. Franklin.

I do hate when people complain about the Nobel prizes only being awarded to people. That's how all awards work. Best actors, olympic champions, victoria cross (a medal for outstanding bravery on the battlefield, and unlike the Nobel prize if you survived you're less likely to win it) winners, all these individuals are made by a collective whole and couldn't do what they've done if there wasn't all the little people in the background. And yet those little people in the background didn't do what the individuals have done. I doubt the people who never won Nobel prizes are as hard done by as people like to think they are.

That photo is the Microsoft DirectX logo.

The way Franklin was done dirty pisses me off to no end.

To be fair, there is often data/research where the originators don't seem to grasp the full implications of what they have, and it takes someone else to re-contextualize the data, who often gets the lion's share of the credit. Not speaking specifically of Franklin's case, but the saying "you are like the roofer who takes credit for the entire house".

@eclipseeffigy

6 ай бұрын

Some people's obsession with balancing things out which are blatantly imbalanced; with applying "well actually" and "to be fair" and "on the other hand" and "to play devil's advocate" o argue a point that is irrelevant to the circumstance ahead, goes too far. Forcing a centric view on an issue that is clearly imbalanced towards one side is a mistake, and only serves confusion.

@eclipseeffigy

6 ай бұрын

Forcing a centric view on an issue that is clearly imbalanced towards one side is a mistake, and only serves confusion. Using a general view to handwave away a specific circumstance is incredibly naive.

@BellroseJewel

6 ай бұрын

Not "to be fair", her data was not some abandoned data where she had given up, she was also actively working to make sense of the data (which she may have done quicker if she wasn't the one hardcarrying the actual experiments). And she was working on her side, unaware that someone had taken her info and rush to publish it first.

@user-cj6sd6wt8j

6 ай бұрын

I don't think so. People follows their sensation. building one sided information will blur the perception of whole image. This is not black and white problem and there are plenty of people who don't agree with.

@user-cj6sd6wt8j

6 ай бұрын

Generalization can not be necessarily applied to every individual case but since this is the case which has same trait as the generalization, we cannot say it's not irelavant

There are no lab at king's college, that's just where we live. labs in cambridge are in departments, not colleges

I've always been somewhat proud to be born the year of the 'unveiling' of this discovery. I learned more detail from this, thanks! And yes, it really wasn't that long ago...

Maurice Wilkins did not deserve any credit for the discovery, and definitely not a Nobel Prize, Franklin did better work than him, and he stole credit from her Watson and Crick did a lot of additional work towards it and totally deserved it

@nickmiller76

6 ай бұрын

Wilkins was still alive though, that helped.

Tibees²? Neat!

Good critique here of how the Nobel prize is awarded, sometimes inaccurately, and the creative process and collaboration in general. Good to learn about Rosalind Franklin.

There was a great documentary TV series The Big Bang Theory that showed how shady the Nobel prize process can be. I really don't get why people make such a fuss about few Swedish dudes deciding who gets a world record in science each year.

@FutureHH

6 ай бұрын

if i recall right nobel prizes are decided by the norwegian parliament, at least partially. it something related to the fact that thar Sweden and Norway for some time up to the 19th cent. had the same king, a so called crown union

@Pexzee

6 ай бұрын

You recall the peace prize that has something to do with Norwegian parliament but the science ones are chosen by Swedish science geezers.

@FutureHH

6 ай бұрын

@@Pexzee ah yes, you're right. strange that comitee isn't international

Thank you Toby for exposing the true discovery of the DNA. Also a Happy New Year to you.

Thank you for this fascinating and disturbing information. There is no positive correlation between intelligence and morality.

@kayakMike1000

6 ай бұрын

For example, Derryberry et al. (2005) found that gifted adolescents were advanced in their moral judgments in comparison to a group of non-gifted children and in both groups, intelligence was a significant predictor for the moral scores.

@arttoegemann

6 ай бұрын

It may be that there is intelligence without moral philosophy but not moral philosophy without intelligence.

@dysfunc121

6 ай бұрын

What is morality?

@arttoegemann

6 ай бұрын

Even an average intelligence knows the importance of morality, of knowing right from wrong.

@dysfunc121

6 ай бұрын

@@arttoegemann What is right and what is wrong?

I agree with Feynman's assessment that the Nobels are meaningless bunk.

Nobel "rewards" were created to stimulate researchers, not to reward them. And it does that just fine.

The passages that disturb me most in The Double Helix are the ones that casually dismiss Rosalind Franklin as an angry, unreasonable woman - emphasis on “woman” - who inexplicably resented sharing her research data with her more level-headed male colleagues.

The photo was no way "stolen". J D Watson got the detail of Photo 51 via the King's group's published data; and it wan't done without concent from Rosaline Frankline, since it was a official procedure. The criminal deed was done by the press who gave all the credit to Watson and Creek only. But the greatest sin was done by the Nobel committee who didn't even mention Dr. Rosy. If it is not Watson's book Double Helix, Dr. Rosaline might have never became known to anyone other than a few Science Historian.

Unethical lack of proper attribution or not, in doesn’t seem fair that the Nobel Prize can only be shared by a maximum of three scientists. However, I can clearly see the need for such limits because the chain of contributors could grow well beyond reason; e.g. the electric provider et al.

Rosalind Franklin was definitely robbed of credit.😞

Tibee please check out NEST exam

This is exactly what we were taught in my genetics class. It feels like Franklin has finally gotten the recognition she deserves 80 years after her death.

All scientific discoveries are based in part on the previous work of other individuals. Watson and Crick put all the information together from all the various sources, including Chargraff and Franklins, and brilliantly deduced the actual structure of the DNA molecule. They both went on to make further fundamental discoveries about the nature of life processes, including but not limited to the genetic code, messenger RNA, and the central dogma of biology, (DNA to RNA to protein). If I were sitting on the Nobel committee in 1953 I too, would have awarded them the Nobel. This video is thought-provoking, and I’d like to see you make more.

Tragic that what should be such a celebration of human research, is tarnished by our ego's need for reputation. Suppose though, if DNA is the cause of our egotistical nature, it's only got itself to blame..

Sweet voice, good video. Sub 🥰👍

Gives a new meaning to the phrase 'parasitic relationship '.