Talk:Rosalind Franklin/Archive 5

message: Hi Martin, I found a style guideline for biographical articles. Hope this is of some interest to you as you have asked in the past about what information is relevant to biographiical articles. Alun 05:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This link already existed in the references section and in the external links section as well, I have removed your second insertion of the article. Alun 14:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Biographies

message: http://www.amiright.com/parody/authors/sweetindigo.shtml
OR
http://www.packer34.freeserve.co.uk/selectedTATAwebsites.htm
"Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band" Based on the performance by The Beatles
"An Ode to Watson, Crick and DNA" Parody by Sweet Indigo 
I wrote this the day after the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's discovery. So it's not strictly accurate. The first couple of lines I actually got from a news article headline. 
It was fifty years ago today
Crick and Watson unlocked DNA
They were working on it quite a while
'Cause that molecule had such style
So may I introduce to you
The fact you've known for all these years
DNA is double-helical
Yes, DNA is double-helical
With purines and pyramidines
DNA is double-helical
The stuff that maps out our genes
DNA is double-
DNA is double-
DNA is double-helical
A sugar and phosphate backbone
And those four bases too
It was such a discovery
They got the Nobel Prize for it
They got the Nobel Prize!
With X-ray crystallography
(By Franklin) It was plain to see
With Maurice Wilkins too
They got the prize in '62
So let me introduce to you
The secret of life on Earth
DNA is double-helical
Yes, DNA is double-helical
The strands run opposite ways
DNA is double helical
And has strict rules that it obeys
DNA is double-
DNA is double-
DNA is double-helical 
"Come Together" Based on the performance by The Beatles
"Francis Crick" Parody by Sweet Indigo 
Francis Crick is dead... *sniffles*. My boyfriend couldn't empathise with me, so I told him to imagine that Timothy Leary had just died. He got it :) With any luck, ol' Tim won't mind me borrowing his song. Incidentally, Francis Crick said he couldn't remember ever boasting "We've discovered the secret of life" in the pub after discovering the structure of DNA. 
Here come that Francis, he work moving up slowly
He see haemoglobin, he got X-ray crystals
He learn fast biology
But took seventeen years to gain a Ph.D.
He go to Strangeways, he dump the physics
He meet Jimmy Watson, he find double helix
He say, "It make you, it make me"
Boasting in the Eagle, Francis Crick you do see
It's the secret of life, so says he
He Nobel prized it, he work on different structures
He got work with Brenner, he look into proteins,
He propose a code that's comma-free
Read the books he's written all those hypotheses
It's the secret of life, so says he
He ask why conscious, he madly pursuing
He define a problem, he sometimes sound crazy
He say brains go cleaning out with dreams
But never found the secret of neuroanatomy
What's the secret of us, so ask he 
"Geno" Based on the performance by Dexy's Midnight Runners
"Genome" Parody by Sweet Indigo 
Venter is a biologist who worked (with others) to finish the first complete bacterial genome, Haemophilus influenzae, kicking the butts of the people working on Escherichia coli. 
Back in '53 in a Cambridge lab (Oh Genome)
Dr. Jimmy Watson and Francis Crick were fab (Oh Genome)
Found one day the helix of our DNA
After a while of peeking at Franklin's X-ray
The brightest minds in science that year
Just picking the code and seeing how it appears
Academic inspiration, you gave us some
After Mendel the abbot, the answer had come
And now we've read the words and we're looking into you
DNA telling genes, that's what it's built to do
Venter took the stage, his work was going fast (Oh Genome)
This man used no mapping, but shot-gun at last (Oh Genome)
He came before E. coli, TIGR behind his name
Finished H. influenzae, new techniques were the game
Then went onto humans, microbes are so tame
The Human Genome Project, remember the name
Academic inspiration, you gave us some
You were Venter the winner, the boffin that won
And now we've got the genes that all work to make 'you'
DNA telling genes, that's what it's built to do
Oh Genome 
I wrote this song whilst procrastinating work for my degree.
!!!
Sorry about the layout, but if you know the songs you can sing these words! Now what about Don Partridge's 1968 hit song "Rosie" being parodied? I am sure it can be done sympathetically and in good taste.
Nitramrekcap mpNitramrekcap
:The text in these songs might be copyright. Please check it's OK to put stuff with the composer first. You are also wasting space on wikipedia, this stuff is not relevant to the article. This place is not for general chit-chat. See Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines   What talk pages may be used for Talk pages are not for general chatter; please keep discussions on talk pages on the topic of how to improve the associated article. Talk pages are also not strictly a forum to argue different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how different points of view should be included in the article so that the end result is neutral. Alun 17:59, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Let's all have a good laugh at these three old song parodies!

message: Does anybody know about Franklin's diffraction photograph (aka Photo 51)? Please tell if you do.PSv255 19:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I aquired a copy from the internet a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure of it's copyright status and don't want to include it if it is in breach of copyright. I think it was in the posession of Jeremy Norman, Maddox thanks him for allowing it's reproduction in her book. I think he has subsequently sold his archive, but I have not found a more recent reference to this event on the internet. It would be nice to include an image of the photograph in the article, but we need to get permission. I looked up it's copyright status, and the copyright will expire 70 years after Franklin's death if I understood the flow chart properly.  It's worth having a look at Copyright law of the United Kingdom, Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ and Wikipedia:Copyrights. I am also unsure of the status of Raymond Gosling regarding the image, some sources claim that Franklin and Gosling produced the image together, but Watson in his book DNA: The Secret of Life claims the image was produced by Raymond Gosling alone (I think this may be wrong), so I am not sure if the copyright might expire 70 years after his death. Copyright law is a bit of a minefield. The other possibility would be to claim fair use, but I'm not sure if the image qualifies, I doubt it has any commercial value, so it may be possible to claim this. Any help you can provide would be very welcome. Alun 05:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks very much Martin, I have requested permission from the Venter Institute to use the photograph, you have been a great help. Let's hope we get the permission. Alun 05:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo 51

message: Alun, apart from correcting some rather poor grammar in the opening paragraph (stitching together two detached sentences), here is what I think is a realy remarkable summary of the early 1950's DNA period:
"In the foreword to The Eighth Day of Creation, the expanded edition of his 1979 masterpiece, Horace Freeland Judson says, "I feared I might seem the official historian of the movement"--molecular biology, that is. If by official he means "authoritative; definitive; the standard against which all others are measured" then his fears are warranted. 
Detailed without being overly technical, humane without being fulsome, The Eighth Day of Creation tells of molecular biology's search for the secret of life. "The drama has everything--exploration of the unknown; low comedy and urgent seriousness; savage competition, vaulting intelligence, abrupt changes of fortune, sudden understandings; eccentric and brilliant people, men of honour and of less than honour; a heroine, perhaps wronged; and a treasure to be achieved that was unique and transcendent." And in Judson, this drama found its very own Shakespeare. --Christine Buckley.
I don't know who Christine Buckley is, but she hits the nail right on the head! Incidentally the book is a very good read, and all the references to it have disapeared off the bibliographies of the Wikipedia articles for the key combatants! (I know because I put them there in the first place.) 
Perhaps someone on the american 'fundamentalist' christian right takes exception to the title? 
All for now, 81.78.75.155mp81.78.75.155
:Thanks for the tip, I'll get around to reading it at some point. Been strapped for time recently, and been editing elsewhere, I tend to buzz around all sorts of pages. Take care. Alun 07:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: a succinct summary of the early 1950's DNA period

message: The article often rotates from the full name "Rosalind Franklin" to "Franklin." Everything but where necessary, should be changed to simply "Franklin." —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:WongFeiHung (talk • contribs) 
You may not be aware of the English public school tradition of referring to other (male) people by their surnames, and putting greater emphasis on initials of christian names (such as "F.H.C." for Francis Crick or "M.H.F." for Maurice Wilkins), but it shouldn't really be applied to English ladies! 62.25.109.194
:Ummmm. Ladies? Do you mean women? Lets not have any sexism here please. It was my fault that it's usually Rosalind Franklin in the article rather than the more correct Franklin. When I extensively modified the article some time ago I used several sources that exclusively refered to Franklin as Rosalind, and I confess I got muddled as to the correct form of words to use. Subsequently I have realised that on wikipedia it is correct to refer to someone by their family name after giving their full name in the introduction. Sorry about that. After so much work on the article I found it rather hard to get motivated to go through the whole thing making the necessary changes, and so it has remained mostly Rosalind Franklin. Please feel free to make the necessary changes yourself User:WongFeiHung if you feel so strongly about it. You could have done it anyway and left a message here stating that you had made such a change if you feel so strongly about it. Alun 21:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There you go again, I think that when someone completes a PhD they have earned the right to be addressed by their proper title, which would of course be Dr. Franklin and not Miss Franklin (which should anyway be Ms. Franklin). What is superior social status? And who decides when someone is regarded as such? I note that the Oxford Dictionary actually defines a lady firstly as a woman. The wikipedia article states Some advocates of non-sexist language recommend not using the word [lady] at all, I fall into that group and find it's use offensive. Alun 14:16, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consistency

message: I do not have access to Wilkin's novel which apparently claims that the prize was awarded for other work in addition to the structure of DNA, but according to the presentation speech, found at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1962/press.html: "It is for the discovery of how these building blocks are coupled together in three dimensions that this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to James Dewey Watson, Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, and Francis Harry Compton Crick."  This seems pretty explicit; in fact, nowhere in the speech is any reference made to anything other than the importance of the molecule's structure.  Perhaps this line should be reconsidered: "The award was given for work on nucleic acids and not exclusively for the discovery of the structure of DNA"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by  138.89.2.71 (talk • contribs) 
:The Nobel Prize was awarded for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material. This is the actual Nobel citation, it may be that the most important part of their work was the discovery of the structure, which is why the speach concentrated on it, but it is not the reason given in the Nobel citation. Anyway Nobel Prizes are usually given for a body of work and not for individual discoveries. You can sign your posts using four tildes like this ~~~~. Alun 09:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS please see the Nobel prize reference, No 93 on the list in the article. Alun 09:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nobel Prize Controversy Correction

message: The following message was posted on the article page:THIS IMAGE IS BEING USED WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. This image is copyright material and must not be reproduced in any way without permission of the copyright holder. The copyright belongs to the National Portrait Gallery, London. For copies, and permission to reproduce the image, please contact the Gallery at picturelibrary@npg.org.uk or via our website at www.npg.org.uk by 217.207.85.50. Alun 11:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This Poster's IP does indeed appear to be from the UK National Portrait Gallery - their point appears valid, but can someone please clarify the copyright law on US servers? There are other pictures, already posted on US sites, which do not have NPG bylines - why don't we swap for one of these?
Bob aka Linuxlad 09:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyright

message: This DNA attribution controversy is very instrusive on all of the biographies of those involved. The problem is that the biography should focus on the individual person and why they alone are notable. This DNA controversy drags everyone into each other's biographies. The DNA controversy should have its own article to avoid the mess and then each of these biographies can focus on the individaul more sharply. -- 67.121.114.170 17:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The information here is about Rosalind Franklin. Now why do you think she is notable? Is she notable because of her work on coal/graphite? Is she notable for her work on viruses? Is she even notable for her work on DNA? There may be a body of opinion in the academic world that thinks that her contributions to these areas are noteworthy in their respective fields, but they would not necessarily constitute noteworthyness for a wiki article. Essentially RF is noteworthy because of the controversy. In fact one could argue that her contribution to the Crick-Watson model would never have gained wide recognition unless Watson had written his book The Double Helix, the tone of which led Anne Sayer to write her book Rosalind Franklin and DNA in order to set the record straight. Watson also made some errors in his book that lead many to believe that RFs data had been used improperly (which they weren't), these errors are what ultimately led to Franklin's fame. So if you remove the controversy section, you effectively remove the reason for her noteworthiness itself. I have spent a lot of time and effort on this page, mainly checking sources and working hard at producing a neutral article, and while I have no problem with your article I am rather pissed off that you now want to remove a great deal of the work I have put in and effectively gut this article of much of its detail. You simply cannot have a fair and ballanced RF article without mentioning the controversy. I am really unhappy about this. This DNA controversy drags everyone into each other's biographies so what is the problem with this, these people did in fact interact with each other and so it would be rather daft if they were not included in each others articles, scientists do not work in splendid isolation from each other. The problem is that the biography should focus on the individual person and why they alone are notable. Often people are notable because of their interactions with others, as in this case. Alun 17:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DNA controversy....

message: I think it would be nice of the long "see also" list were only things are are not otherwise refernced in the prose. -- 67.121.114.170 21:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The long "see also" list 

message: I think that the footnoting on "Dark Lady" is too fine-grained.  Just a footnote at the end of each paragraph would accomplish the same thing. A much more general comment: people who cannot read 10-40 pages of a book in order to verify facts should, maybe not be involved with editing this article. That is not a swipe at whomever added all the footnotes: it is a matter of style and the kind of personality that we are encouraging to become involved in editing this article. We should encourage collagboration where people are willing to do some work and improve overall quality, not just be lead one-sentence-at-a-time (or even, ugh! more fine grained) through the article.  -- 67.121.114.170 21:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said before, there has been some heated debate on this talk page in the past, so it was important to check every fact on the page, it is also wikipedia policy (see WP:V). I spent weeks doing this and it is somewhat annoying when you come here and slag off my hard work. I also refer you to the wikipedia fact and reference check. Alun 06:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnoting on "Dark Lady" 

message: Was there ever any suggestion that anti-semitism touched Franklin's life? I am not looking for a big scandal, just a one-liner about society in general, to remind the read of what life was like back then. We already info the read that she was a British Jew, but it is always something to keep in mind. -- 67.121.114.170 21:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  As long as we are on sexism... 

message: And you put back the grueling sentance-by-sentance footnotes. Ugh! I will come back in maybe a year and see if maybe editors more seroius about Peer review, GA and FA have prevailed. -- 75.24.104.203 06:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Citing sources

message: King's College (London) DNA Controversy
In the best interests of free speech, can anyone say what the above deleted article was all about please? Is this so called 'controversy' related to the spurious "Rosy Franklin was robbed" 'controversy'? Seweryn Chommet's little book is the best available text on the whole subject, but unfortunately it has not been widely circulated in the global scientific academic community! Surely the best place for a debate over the KCL role in DNA was the deleted article? I would be the first to say that KCL's role in the DNA discovery has been historically underestimated, not least because of over focus on Rosalind Franklin personally, and not enough focus on the hard work of Maurice Wilkins, both of whom together with Gosling, Stokes, and Wilson were under the direction of Sir John Randall. (Both the Cavendish Lab. and KCL operated as fellow research units under the Medical Research Council.)
62.25.109.194mp62.25.109.194
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Francis_Crick"
62.25.109.194mp62.25.109.194
:I was actually leaving a message on the King's College DNA controversy talk page when the article was deleted, it came as something of a shock to me. But there was a message that said that CanadianCaesar had deleted the article. When I sent him a message to ask what had happened this was his reply (copied from my talk page): Yes, I deleted both the article and the talk page.  There was no AfD.  It was deleted per WP:CSD- created by an extremely dangerous banned user.  If you wish to recreate the article (using your words, not his), you are certainly welcome.  CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 17:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely the best place for a debate over the KCL role in DNA was the deleted article?
**Well no, wikipedia is not a chat room it is an encyclopedia, debate should not centre on what happened, it should concentrate on what to include and how to include it in the article. Alun 13:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This is carried over from the Francis Crick discussion page as it is relevant to R.E.Franklin

message: Is the addition of KCL to the list a joke or is someone seriously unbalanced? I claim equal rights for the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge of course; so why just add KCL to the list? Nitramrekcap
:I think the banned user that originally created the controversy article made the change. I have reverted it today. Alun 22:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DNA Pioneers dropdown menu: addition of King's College London

message: QUOTE: "The controversy is also not historical fact, it didn't happen in 1953, it happened in 1968, it is based on either a device by Watson in his book to make it more exciting (they were spies and it was all very covert), or it was a simple case of Watson's memory failing him.(Alun)"
Surely it started in 1962 - and not in 1968 - with the award of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Chemistry to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins? They were nominated by Bragg and Bragg lobbied for them to get it - in my opinion, the Nobel Prize could not have been awarded to just Watson and Crick only as there HAD to be some recognition of the big contribution made by the King's College London team; Franklin by 1962 had already died of course, so that just left Wilkins! Nitramrekcap
:The way I see it the controversy is primarily about Franklin. Wilkins was offered co-authorship of the 1953 paper and rightly turned it down. Wilkins was awarded the Nobel Prize as much for his 10 years of work on DNA (both prior to and following the discovery of the structure of the B form of DNA) that did much to support the Crick-Watson model (and incidentally to elucidate the A-form structure) as for his contributions to the model. Wilkins states this in his book quite clearly. There was no real controversy untill Watson wrote his book, and people started to wonder who this Franklin woman was, her contribution had remained obscure untill Watson painted a very unflattering portrait of her in his 1968 book. It all kicked off then when certain people got into a righteous fury over her treatment in the book. Watson also claimed in the book that the data were used without the knowledge of Wilkins or Franklin, and it is this claim of unethical behaviour that really started fingers being pointed, as it turned out this was a distortion of the truth. So it seems to me that a reading of the Watson book leaves one with the impression that Franklin was patronised and ignored, and that her data were stolen by unscrupulous men so they could get the credit, I don't think this is the truth, but it certainly gave the impression of unfairness. Personally I don't think Franklin's contribution was enough to make her eligible for a share of the Nobel Prize even if she had been alive, Crick, Watson and Wilkins had all worked on neucleic acids for years after the discovery and Nobel Prizes are usually awarded for a body of work, rather than a single discovery, hence the citation "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". I think we cannot know what Franklin knew or didn't know about the use of her data. Other people involved, like Crick, Wilkins and Perutz were able to state their side of the story after 1968, and it became apparent that Wilkins was perfectly aware that Crick and Watson had used some of his data (indeed he gave it to them), but Franklin was not alive to say one way or the other what her opinion on the matter was. One has to wonder whether Franklin was just as aware as Wilkins that Crick and Watson were using her data, she seemed unimpressed with their model in 1953 and was not at all interested in theoretical models, she wanted lots of data to support any structure, so that it was essentially scientifically prooved (although as you know there is no such thing as real proof in science) before publication. Maybe one could argue that this was her strength as an experimental scientist, and her weakness as a thoeretician, one might also argue that as a woman she needed a greater degree of proof than a man may have needed in order to be taken seriously (and therefore she was overly cautious), but these are aspects of society rather than science, and are still evident even today. I do wonder how Watson would have portrayed Franklin in his book had she still been alive. If you can find evidence that there was a controversy prior to 1968 then we should include it in the article certainly, I am aware that my interpretation of the events as I have outlined them above may be viewed in a different light by other sources. Alun
Alun,
An impressive reply, if only for its sheer length - but let leave the final words to King's College London and refer to this URL:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/dna/role.html
When I receive a copy of KCL's booklet ("DNA: The Genesis of a Discovery") and have re-read it, I will return to the debate. (I hope to quote the cost of a copy to Finland by surface/air by the way!)
* Alun, please remind me what your e-mail address is - assuming you still have mine, as I have something useful on REF for you? MP Nitramrekcap 
Nitramrekcap 08:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: When did the 'controversy' start?