CharonY

! Moderator Note Considering the lack of discussable science in OP and the fact that the discussion is going nowhere this thread is closed pending review.

That is not really the part of the issue. The review process (or lack of it) is not what elevates a paper and/or makes it famous. In this particular case, the papers (W&C as well as F&G) are published in the same journal and the same issue (which I meant with "back to back"). The question why W&C became the textbook famous one is probably due to a number of reason. The most important one is that they made the strongest and most complete claims on the structure. But. as I noted, it is curious that it had in fact little to no math or data in it. The reason, of course is that they relied on data from others, but it is not really mentioned in the main text in a lot of detail. F&G was far more careful in the conclusions and probably less "sexy" that way. The second aspect is related to PR. Franklin left the lab and focused on viral work, whereas W&C stayed on the DNA molecule. It depends on the viewpoint. Most of the time it is a long way from the idea, execution, revising idea, more experiments and the final product. At the end of that process a lot of money and effort has been. As such who had the initial idea may also not be around anymore or contributed less than those that made it work or revised the idea, for example. The other aspect is of course, that without the PI pitching ideas to funding agencies and building the lab, there would be no one to actually do it in the first place. Especially in experimental sciences it is complicated and quite frankly, the traditional way to credit folks does not work well in the age of big experiments.

Not really, IMO. The reason is that (at least using today's criteria on publishing), the paper itself is remarkably thin in evidence. For the most part it is a hypothesis that is put forward, and which crucially is somewhat supported (or at least not contradicted) by evidentiary elements, which were not created by the authors. It should also be noted that a helical structure was not an unique idea- it has been proposed before (Stokes, Wilikins as well as Furberg). In Franklin's paper (which was published back to back) she also proposed a helical structure and the agreement with the data, but pointed out that it is highly probable but cannot be taken as irrefutable evidence. If I read the papers next to each other, my persona inclination would focus on Franklin's and Gosling's as it has more evidence to support their claims. whereas W&C mostly just proposed a hypothesis. While they ended up to be right, at least nowadays you would require substantial evidence for it. which was somewhat lacking in the paper itself, which is structured more as a comment. And in hindsight I do find it remarkable that it got so much more traction compared to the experimental paper. It should also be noted that during that time, peer-review was not yet an established process, which may have contributed to that.

It is usually an arrangement between your supervisor and them. For the most part we want students to be on the first position, as it cements the contribution of the lab/group of the PI. But there are exceptions when things can get political (e.g. large collaborative projects that end up in Nature/Science). That fight, however, is typically not fought by the students as at that point there is also a lot money and work time involved, which goes beyond the person having an idea. Edit: One thing that you might want to get used to is that ideas are cheap in academia. It is to a large degree of getting it done (performing experiments, collecting data, analyzing and writing the manuscript) that count.

It is not only about the credit stealing in my mind. So, if you look at the paper published by Franklin, you'll see that while supportive of a helix structure, the quality of the diffraction was insufficient to establish irrevocable evidence of it. She pretty much acknowledges that, in the report. I think (but may be wrong) that she may have intended to improve resolution with further experiments, which was not possible after Watson & Crick sold their structure based on her data. Or I should say, "oversold". At least from the viewpoint of an experimentalist. They just happened to be right. So while she was the first to provide structural data supporting the now known structure, it was W&C who went ahead and really sold it. But again, this does show my bias coming from the more experimental side of things.

Nope, not as such. She was acknowledged for providing data, which is pretty much worthless. As a bit of background. at King's college, women were barred from social venues, including the dining hall, where much of the collegial and scientific exchange happened. From the get go, she would have been isolated and had trouble in collaborative publishing. The X-ray data itself was published separately but considering how famous Watson and Crick became, I think it is quite easy to tell that that was pretty much overshadowed by the other paper.

The award itself is less of an issue, she died before it was given out (though it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if she had been alive). Rather problematic is that she was not on the paper and that subsequently the work was almost exclusively with Watson and Crick. That in itself is problematic on several levels. Crossposted with SJ

In most disciplines only two position count: first author (usually student), last author (PI/mentor). In natural sciences at least It is exceedingly rare that a student gets a paper submitted to a mainstream journal without going over the desk of a PI. Contributions on a paper are iffy, and groups often have different policies which can differ quite a bit from generally accepted standards.

As Arete said, publishing results is sharing it with the broader community. If you want something patented, is generally recommended to obtain a patent before or closely to when you publish. Once you publish, everything in it is free for others to use and expand upon. Future work tend to be found either in theses or in certain types of reviews (e.g. "Perspectives"). There is little value (typically) to have something like that in an original paper except in the very broadest sense (e.g. the connection between X and Y remains to be solved). As such there is no stealing involved, as you offer it up.

A) Classifications on the species levels are already tricky, below even more so. Nonetheless they are used for certain contexts in order to formulate hypotheses. B) It follows that these types of classifications are not universal, but follow the context of traits/conditions under consideration. I.e. there are parameters with which we can construct group populations, but these are only meaningful in special contexts. C) These classifications are in use in human studies, though there is increasing recognition that superficial groupings may not be appropriate to draw conclusions, resulting low reproducibility. There is somewhat more emphasis in trying to utilize genetic data instead.

There is an interesting article on wired with a focus on the Italian five star movement, their links to other populist movements and the role of social media. Bannon and Farage have guest roles there. Link

Exactly.

With regards to inserting digestions sites (or any sequences for that matter) you generally append them to your primer(s).

Not specific to your question, but in the US they bring up distorted views on Europe quite often. Refugees raping Germany, Sharia laws in the UK, no-go zones, the list goes on. What I think is that there is a loosely (probably informal) right-wing umbrella (Bannon has been building such a system, I doubt he is the only one) working to create these divisive issues (such as trying to rile up folks with "identity politics" or similar talking points). The interesting bit is that the thing seems to follow to a large extent the US playbook (socialism?? Soros???), which theoretically should not translate well into the European systems. Except that for some reasons they do.

I am not pretending that I actually know the answer to this question and in many cases I think that the outcome is better. However that would be in the end an utilitarian way to sort out morals. Certainly not wrong but also not trivially correct. As I mentioned, there are several frameworks out there (most of which I am not familiar with) to even start analyzing the morality of wars. I do have found a review on some of the discussions on just wars: Lazar, Annual Review of Political Science 20:27-54 2017, which is a nice compact read.

A barrier itself is not immoral and it is not what folks claim. The immoral part comes from the fact that POTUS started a campaign demonizing asylum seekers, lie about immigrant-related crimes and help federal employee's livelihood hostage in order to get a signature project started that does not fulfill a an actual need.

I am not referring to war crimes. In the "just war" framework of morality there are two elements: jus ad bellum (i.e. the right to engage in war) and "jus in bello" (i.e. the conduct in war). If both are followed, it can be considered a just war. This explicitly includes killing of opposition fighters (which, on the individual moral level would not justified) but implicitly also collateral deaths in civilians. Some argue that this makes the jus in bello a rather murky proposal. With regard to the Vietnam war, it is true that it is not a completely novel concept. After all, questioning the morality should not be that surprising. However, the just war hypothesis had a very strong foundation and it was still heavy in use for example to justify the Iraq war(s). I can dig out some literature, though my philosophy reading days are long over and I am not sure which books would be the right sources. The peace movement did indeed chip on the "just war" paradigm, but it has remained remarkably intact (and of course, quite a few vets joined the antiwar movement). It has been for example been used to justify the Iraq war(s). My fear is that it would rather depend on where you are when a conflict escalates.

No, quite the contrary. The larger issue is that strong, large narratives have been around for a long time which have been based on feeble facts or selective reading of data and literature. As scientists, we strive to follow data and not put our larger social interpretation on it. The latter does not always work and there is quit a re-thinking on how we use group identity in building cohorts, for example. In medical sciences, for example often black, Asian and Caucasian are used as distinct groups. However, while this is a social grouping, it does not necessarily follow genetics. African Americans, for example often have admixture with European groups whereas recent immigrants from certain parts of Africa have much less. Likewise South-East Asians or even Asians from different immigration waves face quite different socioeconomic histories which do (perhaps surprisingly) impact health studies. The human desire to form convenient groups is working against us in these cases. For example, averaging income and health in these groups, Asians often come up on top. However, this ignores subgroups within the Asian communities that are almost as bad off as indigeneous populations (which usually, again for historic reasons) have specific health challenges. Even folks who try to make evidence-policies are often unaware of these issues and thereby enacting strategies leading to adverse outcomes. And this is why as scientist we need to be aware why we create certain groups, on what measures they are based and to what extent we can learn from this particular type of grouping and associated studies. The reason is that as scientist we do not want our own perceptions make us blind to facts, but we are only human after all. Also, when communicating to a broader audience, we have to be cognizant to the fact that certain unsavory types will pick and choose from what we say in order to further their own agenda.

Nope. The difference is between scientific communications. which acknowledges the contexts and definitions and how it is presented to the broader public, who lack that context. And of course there are also certain scientists that oversell aspects for various reasons.

The crux with subspecies (which also applies to a certain degree to much of the species concept) is whether a given classification is useful. Due to the continuous nature of genetic variation these classifications are artificial to various degrees. However, they afford us with a tool to perform certain analyses, e.g. testing whether certain geographic features may lead to formation of specialized or isolated sub-groups. And of course it can be done with human populations as well. The important thing to remember is that the groups that form will depend on the features you select. Or, in case of whole-genome data you will usually see groups following geographic patterns. However the concept has been abused for so much that one has to carefully frame the research as folks will inevitably put stuff in there that is not in the data.

Well, the selection of this particular issue (rather than other, indeed pressing matters) clearly shows the xenophobic agenda in the WH and meshes with all the other policies they put in place. It just happens to mesh well with a good proportion of the voter base.

Would be the difference to put in a fence somewhere and putting one with the purpose of regulating border security, I would guess. Not sure whether it would make a practical differences. Some Republicans (Montana and West Virginia at least) are proposing measures to allocate ~10 millions of state funds to fund the wall. Not sure how likely it will be, but it is clearly mostly a symbolic gesture either way.

So you are going to ignore that from your own list there is a substantial element alignment with what is considered the progressive (i.e. non-moderate) program? Also the fact that both parties offer policies that are on the conservative side of things as they judge their constituency more conservative then they are. Also the fact that in the article you linked one of the issue is simply that moderate politicians may just not be sufficiently aligned with what voters ultimately want? To explain the issue it is probably worthwhile to point out that labels such as moderate are ultimately not helpful. The reason is that there is a significant gap in self-identification and desired policies. For example, while many minority communities share strong overlap in terms of social conservative ideologies, which could include aspects like the role of women, abortion, role of religion, LGBT issues etc. they tend to vote Democratic as a whole. The reason here is that for many the GOP stance toward immigrants and minorities can be seen as soft (or even hard) threat to them which is a disincentive for them to vote GOP. Likewise an astonishingly high number of especially low- middle income Republican voters are strongly in favour of medicare and/or universal health coverage. Yet clearly the GOP was hard on against it. They likely have to pivot now, though, as it seemingly only slowly dawns them that they were leaving their voters behind. While there is clearly a party bias, the US population as a whole is astonishingly comfortable with progressive stances (and again, as reflected with your previous list) and as such, the political continuum as represented by both parties is not representative for the spectrum found in voters. This does not mean that there is a space for moderates. As mentioned before, the moderate would have to pick and choose not from the middle spectrum, but it would be squarely in the moderate to left part of the Democratic party. The other option would try to obtain votes from the hardcore left or right base (no Immgration of Muslims, but with free healthcare for all!), which is likely not going to work for a large number of reasons.

Except among historians it is considered mostly settled and I have yet to see a serious claim to the opposite. From historians that is, not random blogs from Nazi apologists.

Perhaps from a different perspective, if we use the topics outlined by JC (which, by no means mean that they decisive topics), in many areas public opinion in fact overlap with some of the more progressive opinions within the Democratic party. More in many areas than the stance of moderate Democrats so that it would be very very difficult to find a slot that is well, more moderate but still supported by public opinion. As already mentioned, the majority favours tax brackets of 70%, with high support by Democreats and Independents (71% and 60%) vs Republicans (still 45%). While many moderate Democrats are a bit mum when it comes to the government involvement in health care, some 60% of the population think that it is the government responsibility to ensure health care coverage. Similarly, many Democrats especially tread carefully around gun rules, yet over 60% would like to see stricter control. Carbon Tax is supported by 53% of all respondents (but with a partisan lean). In the end it seems that there is little space in what you have characterized as the middle field. Rather, the imaginary successful moderate would in the end need to adopt policies that are more in line with what is considered the more extreme proposals. The background for all this is congress misjudges the positions of their voters by a fair bit. This follows some other reports which indicate that politicians as a whole think that their voter base is more conservative than they really are. I.e. if you take someone that would indeed occupy the middleground between Dems and Reps, you will have someone with less support than someone going for the actual base of each party.