(CNN) When internet trolls tried to detract from Katherine Bouman's rise to stardom for her part in creating the first image of a black hole, her colleague quickly shut them down.
Bouman, 29, created one of the algorithms that led to the groundbreaking black hole image. She also helped develop the imaging and verification process.
However, a nasty corner of the internet tried to downplay Bouman's role and started spreading posts claiming that Andrew Chael -- a white male scientist -- was actually the mastermind behind the project.
The misleading posts, on Reddit and Twitter, said Chael alone had authored "850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm!"
Lostwalllet on April 12nd, 2019 at 20:06 UTC »
I'd just be happy if they gave those they mention in the article the appropriate titles—it's no small feat to have a PhD, especially before 30, and Dr. Bouman (as well as others with advanced post-nominals) deserve their proper titles.
You_Dont_Party on April 12nd, 2019 at 18:58 UTC »
Also, it should be noted that she was very open and gracious about how this was a team effort in all her speaking engagements I’ve seen. However, I do find it odd how many people seem concerned with everyone getting proper recognition on this one discovery, and how few of those same people seemed to care about any of the innumerable recent discoveries attributed to non-women.
DConstructed on April 12nd, 2019 at 18:18 UTC »
It was so ridiculous.
Projects like that generally have a lot of people working under a lead person or maybe two.
It doesn't devalue the work of the others to focus on the lead.
And there are many, many projects that have male leads that no one has said "hey! How come he gets the credit and not Ben or Mary?"