Watch the video below (It is long but well worth it)
When you are finished, answer the following questions in a reply to this blog post
(1) Was Rosalind Franklin “Robbed”?
(2) What “rights” do scientists have to their data? Do they “own” it?
(3) What do you think of Gosling’s statement at the end of the video about who was responsible for Wilkins (and thus Watson and Crick) seeing the data?
(4) Did Rosalind Franklin “steal” Wilkins’ student (Raymond Gosling)?
(5) Do you think something like this would happen today? Have times changed?
(6) Were Watson and Crick too careless in their first model, or is this ( as some have suggested) just how science works, by trial and error? Was Franklin too cautious?
1 – Yeah, Franklin was totally robbed. Watson and Crick took her data and created a model which they did not think up. Then they published it without crediting her. This is plagiarism.
2 – It seems like scientist had little rights, if any, to their data back then. Now-a-days you can get patents on intellectual property, and even then, your ideas are completely susceptible to theft. You just get some more legal pull in the matter, that is if it ever gets patented.
3 – I honestly watched the last 15 minutes of the video 3 times and could not pinpoint the statement this question is asking about. In regard to the closing statements though, I do think it is a shame that she was painted as a mean woman when she was alive and never got to see the fruits of her labor or get the recognition she deserves. It was stripped from her and that is very unfortunate. Her legacy lives on though, and her findings have and will improve the quality of life for all humans.
4 – No, it isn’t stealing if a human being willingly chooses to do something different than they originally intended.
5 – I think something like this is probably just as easy to happen today, just in a different way. There is now an infinite source of information available to steal and not give credit where it is due on the internet. I’m not sure how often it happens in science, but I would imagine it is quite a lot just based on the vast amount of knowledge out there and the massive amount of research going on at any given time.
6 – I don’t think they were careless; they just weren’t correct with their prediction. They were on the right track with the triple helix, I think they may have just gotten ahead of themselves when showing it to the world before they could confirm or undeniably support their prediction. Franklin may have been too cautious with sharing her findings, but she wanted to make sure it was right, and there isn’t much fault in that.
Watson and Crick did come up with their own model, but you are correct that they did not acknowledge her contribution to the model. The key point in question 3 is that Gosling states “I may have given Wilkins the data (Photo 51). This is very odd at the least. You would think that he could have remembered giving it since it was so important.
Watson and Crick were somewhat careless because they based their model on incorrect information (Watson did not remember the right details).