[kakarot]

Hacker News isn't some monolithic community. Each time, you're seeing different people express their opinions. There's no hypocrisy there.

I think it's friggin awesome to see women in science. But even if Bouman was male I would still be cautious of attributing so much of an international collaboration to one person in the form of "Meet the _____ behind the first black hole image". That phrasing disregards too much hard work. I see no reason to offer Bouman special treatment in this regard at the expense of others solely because of her gender. That isn't equality.

[soVeryTired]

I don't really think she's getting special treatment because of her gender though. I think she's in the spotlight because:

1/ She led the team and was first author on the image reconstruction paper

2/ She gave a Ted talk on the topic a while back

3/ There's a brilliant photo of her initial reaction to the image that captures the excitement of scientific discovery circulating on the internet

[kakarot]

Thanks for mentioning the Ted talk, I'm about to check it out now.

The first headline on Google for me when searching "black hole image" is this very BBC article.

It was clearly written to grab the reader's attention, and it grabs it away from the actual phenomenon as well as all of the other brilliant minds who came together to make this happen.

She led the CS team. But very-long-baseline interferometry has been around for half a century. Heino Falcke proposed the experiment. Shep Doeleman led the entire EHT initiative. Scientists around the world brought techniques to the table.

I imagine even Bouman takes issue with being labeled "the scientist behind the first image of the black hole". She is surely aware and appreciative of the massive international effort involved.

[roguecoder]

Her existence is not a distraction from the science, and her being a her definitely isn’t. If it distracted you, that sounds like a you problem. You could try spend time reading about various women’s accomplishments until their gender is simply a fact rather than a “distraction”.

[kakarot]

You are arguing against a strawman. I never made any such claim that "her existence is a distraction from the science".

I never made any comment as to her gender being a distraction, either?

Your post is very mean-spirited, ignorant of the views I just expressed, and honestly I don't like your implication that I am not familiar with the accomplishments of women in the past, especially in my field. Or that I have a problem with their gender. Ada Lovelace and Joan of Arc are two of my greatest inspirations! Cut the obvious virtue signalling.

My entire point is that gender has no bearing on this discussion. It's a discussion about misattributing a massive group effort to one individual. The point is that gender should not play a role in either direction, because that would be sexist. Everything you've extrapolated upon you just pulled out of the aether and not my mouth.