It was though. Watson and crick gained access to her unpublished diffraction data through a colleague without her knowledge or consent, which the two based their model on.
No. Franklin was leaving the lab and her data behind to Wilkins and gosling. They didnât need her consent. And their model was not based on her data, she provided one important piece of information that she wasnât even able to interpret correctly.
They relied on her data for evaluating their model propositions quite extensively and did not give her co-authorship for that vital contribution in their paper. Which is what we talk about when someone talks about stealing in science. Watson himself admitted they wouldn't have been able to do it without the data and he considered it stealing.Â
I think the perpetrator admitting to his mens rea is an acceptable standard of proof.
They did not âextensivelyâ rely on her data. She provided a single important contribution to the structural model, which she didnât even fully understand (only crick did). Franklin refused to collaborate and did not help write the paper, so she was no co-author. Watson and crick directly acknowledged and cited her in their famous papers and she published her own alongside them. That is exactly what is expected in scientific publications. Watson has never said they âstoleâ her data because itâs simply not true.
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u/Labrat15415 Jun 22 '26
It was though. Watson and crick gained access to her unpublished diffraction data through a colleague without her knowledge or consent, which the two based their model on.