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To undermine Katherine Bouman's role in the black hole photo, trolls held up a white man

Rejected submission by aristarchus at 2019-04-12 23:49:07 from the Why-are-there--Black-holes,-but no-White-holes-except-white-A-holes? dept.
Science

Full title:

To undermine Katherine Bouman's role in the black hole photo, trolls held up a white man as the real hero -- until he fought back

In CNN [cnn.com]:

When internet trolls tried to detract from Katherine Bouman's [cnn.com] rise to stardom for her part in creating the first image of a black hole [cnn.com], 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.

Ah, alt-science and Ghostbusters at work! But then,

However, the effort quickly backfired.
Though it may have been nice to receive more recognition, Chael [twitter.com] immediately took to Twitter to explain that the online trolls had exaggerated his contributions, and he defended Bouman's work. In addition, Chael said that as an openly gay man, he is also an underrepresented demographic in STEM.
"Once I realized that many online commentators were using my name and image to advance a sexist agenda to claim that Katie's leading role in our global team was invented, I felt I should say something to make it clear I rejected that view," Chael told CNN.


Original Submission