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This week, Earthlings was initiated to one of the most important images of humanity: the first image of a black hole horizon of events.
While this slightly shiny orange donut was undoubtedly the star of the show, this breakthrough was also celebrated as a memorable day for women scientists. Dr. Katherine Bouman, 29, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, has been instrumental in creating the image and has been widely recognized by the media for her contribution.
In April 2017, a network of radio telescopes scattered around the world began to look in the heavens, their "eyes" focused on a black hole located 54 million light-years in the center of the Messier 87 galaxy. Over the next two years, a team of 200 scientists worked tirelessly to extract the meaning of these data and bring them together, ultimately leading to the memorable image published this week. Dr. Bouman's expertise in computer science was used, along with his team, to write part of the algorithm that assembled the data to create the final product.
Nevertheless, everyone was not satisfied with Bouman's praises and the trolls hosted on the internet quickly came down. They argued that "Andrew Chael, another member of the Event Horizon Telescope team, was actually the brain of the picture and had written most of the code, but that the media and the "SJW" used Dr. Bouman to push their "left narration". and "feminist agenda".
"It was only viral because the news is desperate to stroke a woman for doing something other than a baby," wrote a troll on Twitter. Another m said he would go through the code to check "if she had really done the work".
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This should go without saying, it's ridiculous. But it's also wrong for a number of reasons.
"No algorithm or person has created this image," says Bouman in a Facebook message.
"It took the incredible talent of a team of scientists from around the world and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods and techniques. analysis needed to achieve this seemingly impossible feat. "
In a long Twitter feedChael defended Bouman, a colleague and friend, hailing the recognition of his work and pointing out that he had not written the "850,000 lines of code" that people were trying to attribute to him.
"I am delighted that Katie is recognized for her work and that she inspires people as an example of women's leadership in STEM," he wrote.
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It is essential to improve the profile of women in science. There are some, like the controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson who will (and will) argue"You must not confuse equal opportunities with equal results." However, the simple fact that boys and girls naturally prefer different subjects does not take into account the considerable number of closely related structural and social factors that contribute to these statistics.
In the United States, 1 in 4 STEM graduates start a career in STEM, but this statistic is correct 1 woman out of 7. As STEM women often point out, the problem is not to attract women and girls to STEM-related topics, but to keep them, it's a whole other problem, because of attitudes to STEM. women in a workplace dominated by men, which implies their promotion.
More importantly, science, like any other thing, is richer for diversity. The under-representation of women in science equates to a huge loss of critical talents, skills, ideas and crucial perspectives.
It is also essential that science and scientific research reflect the world it is trying to understand. Here's an example: women are 17% more likely than men to die in a car accident and 71% more likely to be slightly injured, even if they wear a seatbelt.. Why? Seat belts are not designed for women. All the research carried out was then tested on men, generally larger and larger.
In the same spirit, a report published in the journal Elsevier have shown that research teams with greater diversity and wider representation of social groups tend to generate more original ideas, mainly because of the diversity of points of view introduced in an argument.
It's simple. "Diversity adds to the collective intelligence of a research group, not only enhances creativity, but also provides new contexts for understanding the societal relevance of the research itself," the report says.
Frankly, the world could do with as many Dr. Boumans as we can get.
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