Scientists’ unguarded moments

Earlier on Twitter, I shared an Instagram picture of Dr. Katie Bouman at work, imaging a black hole.

This has been a widely shared picture, and I was a little surprised when I saw a friend on Facebook question it. She said when there was scientific discoveries that showed images of men, the men looked more composed and professional. This made the imaging of a black hole look like an almost accidental “Did I do that?” moment.

Certainly Bouman’s picture was not the only one available. Here’s a picture of another one of the black hold team, Kazunori Akiyama.

Both Akiyama and Bouman are at computers, looking at the historic images they made. But Akiyama’s is almost certainly a staged, posed picture.

I asked what she thought of this picture of the New Horizons team, looking at images of Pluto close up for the first time. The man in the middle is project leader Alan Stern.

She replied that she thought it did a disservice to the science and to Stern if it had been widely reported. It had been seen quite widely, though probably not as much as the Bouman picture.

This interested me, because it spoke to the risks and rewards of scientists showing their unguarded moments.

On the one hand, these spontaneous moments capture something that is, I think, deeply human. Excitement. Joy. Achievement. Surprise.

But I also get that these are moments where people look undignified or vulnerable. It’s easy to mock people for looking goofy. Especially for big projects that have a lot of taxpayer money behind them, it might not be a good look. It can look like people just screwing around.

Personally, I think that sharing those spontaneous moments are worth it. My wife has been watching a lot of Brené Brown talks recently, and she talks a lot about the concept of vulnerability. And how vulnerability is one of the best predictors of courage.

I think scientists could use a lot more encouragement. And if that means looking in a way that surprises people, that’s all right by me.

Since I’m talking black holes, there was some discussion over who did what. Bouman got a lot of media attention, Sara Issaon pointed out that the image was not Bouman’s algorithms alone. Weirdly, this snowballed into some trying to undermine her contribution entirely. Andrew Chael ably tackled the trolls.

References

First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole

External links

Meet one of the first scientists to see the historic black hole image