NICHOLAS WADE: The Myth of the Wronged Heroine: A Nature article traffics in debunked history to bolster claims of discrimination against women in science. “Women receive less credit for their contributions to science than do men, just as Rosalind Franklin was denied credit for her role in discovering the structure of DNA—or so says a recent article in Nature. But the authors’ statement about Franklin is false, and their conclusion about women in science is probably no more trustworthy. The portrayal of Franklin as a wronged heroine is a modern myth that will not die, propagated by feminists who hope with claims of discrimination to undermine male dominance of science.”

It’s bigoted to talk about male dominance in science, historically, anyway. How do we know how those “male” scientists would have identified today?

Plus: “In asserting that Franklin was ‘wrongfully denied authorship’ on the Watson and Crick paper, the Lane group seems to believe that she was a junior member of Crick’s laboratory who had a claim on the team’s joint work. In fact, she was leader of a rival team at a different institution. Listing one’s competitors as coauthors on a discovery paper is hardly a common practice.”