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> In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.

Hmm. I guess citation needed?



This seems to have been either a complete, sensationalistic fabrication, or at best, a totally negligent misread.

See for yourself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086

The thread began, "If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?"

And it's not referring to others on HN; as the replies make clear, it's about people elsewhere.


Scroll down to the very bottom of that discussion thread and unfurl the flagged threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634262

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632301


The comments on that story were nothing like the impression any reader would get from the reporter's description.

Again: "users combed through her code on GitHub"

Reality: One user, in a detached, downvoted, flagged, dead comment invisible to 99% of visitors to the site posted a link to an image analyzing her GH contributions, and was immediately and widely rebuked.


I was in that thread while it was active: it took awhile for those discussions to become "detached, downvoted, flagged, dead".


That's not what the capture at the Internet Archive appears to show:

http://web.archive.org/web/20190411122008/https://news.ycomb...




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