Franx Meta Fiction
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Each year, the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting brings close to 600 young scientists from all over the world together with Nobel laureates for a week of talks and informal gatherings.
I showed above slide after my science talk on June 27, telling the young scientists that apart from science I do a few other things, too.
The result was instantaneous: 1200 page views for the next 24 hours, and more to come. Clearly, night life in Lindau is surfing the internet, after the last Schenke has closed.
But then came a second wave on July 2, and that one would not have happened without the visibility my site had gained from the first.
For context, see my previous post “Regarding the myth of anti-male discrimination.”
Lindau, in its 72nd meeting this year, had a laudable focus on diversity. In this meeting, young scientists from 80 countries were present. In a session on “The Future of Structural Biology” on June 27, to which I was appointed in recognition of the role of single-particle cryo-EM, particularly its time-resolved methods, Kurt Wuethrich chose to use his time to speak about something altogether different, anti-male discrimination, and about his discomfort at seeing the Lindau meeting focus on anything but science. A Science news item published on July 2 came to the immediate conclusion, on the force of Wuthrich’s statement, that the community of male scientists is divided on this issue.
Strictly speaking, if a cluster contains N points, and a single one is an outlier, the cluster might be called “divided,” but nobody would seriously use this terminology since it elevates a whimsical observation into the main stream. But this is exactly what happened: the article in Science elevated a single outlier’s position to the perception of a trend, just at the time affirmative actions were being under attack by the Trump-rigged Supreme Court.
So this explains the second wave in the diagram below: in response to the Science article I drafted a commentary and, without a clue on how to post it since Science provides little information, I decided to put it on franxfiction, relying on the first wave of eyes to see it and propagate it.
The second wave arrived promptly. And the most interesting thing is that by the time I finally got hold of the Science News editor, she had already prepared a shortened version of the draft, which she had picked up from my franxfiction blog.
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This entry was posted in Blog and tagged cluster, cryo-EM, Lindau Nobel meeting, myths, Science, structural biology, Supreme Court, Trump-rigged. Bookmark the permalink.
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