Editing Francis Crick (section)

==Controversy==
===Use of other researchers' data===
Watson and Crick's use of [[Photo 51|DNA X-ray diffraction data]] collected by Franklin and Wilkins has generated an enduring controversy. It arose from the fact that some of Franklin's unpublished data were used without her knowledge or consent by Watson and Crick in their construction of the double helix model of DNA.<ref name="Profile"/><ref name="Judson">Judson, H.F. 1996. ''The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology''. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, chapter 3. {{ISBN|0-87969-478-5}}.</ref> Of the four DNA researchers, only Franklin had a degree in chemistry;<ref name="Profile"/> Wilkins and Crick had backgrounds in physics, Watson in biology.

[[File:Experimental setup of Photo 51.svg|thumb|Experimental set up of photo 51<ref>{{Cite web |title=Geograph:: Dr Rosalind Franklin and Photo 51 © Robin Stott |url=https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3258777 |access-date=2024-04-23 |website=www.geograph.org.uk}}</ref>]]

Prior to publication of the double helix structure, Watson and Crick had little direct interaction with Franklin herself. They were, however, aware of her work, more aware than she herself realised.  Watson was present at a lecture, given in November 1951, where Franklin presented the two forms of the molecule, type A and type B, and discussed the position of the phosphate units on the external part of the molecule. In January 1953, Watson was shown an X-ray photograph of B-DNA (called [[Photo 51|photograph 51]]),<ref>[[#Maddox|Maddox]], pp. 177–178</ref> by Wilkins.<ref name="Maddox">[[#Maddox|Maddox]], p. 196</ref><ref>[[#Crick|Crick (1990)]], p. 67</ref> Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin's PhD student Raymond Gosling.<ref name="Maddox" /><ref>[[#Wilkins|Wilkins]], p. 198</ref> Wilkins and Gosling had worked together in the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Biophysics Unit before director John Randall appointed Franklin to take over both DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling's thesis. It appears that Randall did not communicate effectively with them about Franklin's appointment, contributing to confusion and friction between Wilkins and Franklin.<ref>Sayre, Olby, Maddox, Elkin, Wilkins</ref> In the middle of February 1953, Crick's thesis advisor, Max Perutz, gave Crick [[King's College London DNA Controversy|a copy of a report]] written for a Medical Research Council biophysics committee visit to King's in December 1952, containing data from the King's group, including some of Franklin's crystallographic calculations.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hubbard, Ruth |url=https://archive.org/details/politicsofwomens00hubb |title=The Politics of Women's Biology |date=1990 |publisher=Rutgers State University |isbn=0-8135-1490-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/politicsofwomens00hubb/page/60 60] |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="JudsonCh3">Chapter 3 of ''The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology'' by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (1996) {{ISBN|0-87969-478-5}}.</ref><ref>Elkin, L.O. (2003)p 44</ref><ref>[[Francis Crick#Maddox|Maddox]], pp. 198–199</ref> Franklin was unaware that photograph 51 and other information had been shared with Crick and Watson. She wrote a series of three draft manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone. Her two manuscripts on form A DNA reached ''[[Acta Crystallographica]]'' in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953,<ref>Franklin, R.E. and Gosling, R.G. authors of papers received 6 March 1953 Acta Crystallogr. (1953). 6, 673 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres I. The Influence of Water Content Acta Crystallogr. (1953). 6, 678 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres II. The Cylindrically Symmetrical Patterson Function</ref> one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model.<ref>[[#Maddox|Maddox]], p. 205</ref>

The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Before this, both Linus Pauling, Watson, and Crick had generated erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.<ref name="ReferenceA">Schwartz, James (2008) [http://www.evolbiol.ru/large_files/darwin_dna.pdf ''In Pursuit of the Gene. From Darwin to DNA'']. Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|0674034910}}.</ref> Her experimental results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals, and these results were most consistent with the three sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule.<ref>[[#Wilkins|Wilkins]] provides a detailed account of the fact that Franklin's results were interpreted as most likely indicated three, and possibly four, polynucleotide strands in the DNA molecule.</ref> Franklin's X-Ray photograph showed that the backbones had to be on the outside. Although she at first insisted vehemently that her data did not force one to conclude that DNA has a helical structure, in the drafts she submitted in 1953 she argues for a double helical DNA backbone.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2003-04-22 |title=Rosalind Franklin's Legacy |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/rosalind-franklin-legacy/ |access-date=2024-04-23 |website=www.pbs.org }}</ref> Building on her manuscripts, she discovered that form A DNA had antiparallel backbones, which supported the double helical structure of DNA.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2003-04-22 |title=Rosalind Franklin's Legacy |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/rosalind-franklin-legacy/ |access-date=2024-04-07 |website=www.pbs.org }}</ref> She did this through identification of the [[space group]] for DNA crystals. This would go to help Watson and Crick decide to look for DNA models with two antiparallel polynucleotide strands.

In summary, Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data: 1) her 1951 seminar, attended by Watson,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cullen |first=Katherine E.|title=Biology: the people behind the science |date=2006 |publisher=[[Infobase Publishing|Chelsea House]] |location=New York |isbn=0-8160-5461-4 |page=136}}</ref> 2) discussions with Wilkins,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cullen |first=Katherine E. |title=Biology: the people behind the science |date=2006 |publisher=[[Infobase Publishing|Chelsea House]] |location=New York |isbn=0-8160-5461-4 |page=140}}</ref> who worked in the same laboratory with Franklin, 3) a research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research Council-supported laboratories.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Stocklmayer |first1=Susan M. |author-link1=Susan Stocklmayer |last2=Gore |first2=Michael M. |last3=Brtyant |first3=Chris |title=Science Communication in Theory and Practice |date=2001 |publisher=[[Wolters Kluwer|Kluwer Academic Publishers]] |isbn=1-4020-0131-2 |page=79}}</ref> Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin all worked in MRC laboratories.

Crick and Watson felt that they had benefited from collaborating with Wilkins. They offered him a co-authorship on the article that first described the double helix structure of DNA. Wilkins turned down the offer, a fact that may have led to the terse character of the acknowledgement of experimental work done at King's College in the eventual published paper. Rather than make any of the DNA researchers at King's College co-authors on the Watson and Crick double helix article, the solution that was arrived at was to publish two additional papers from King's College along with the helix paper. [[Brenda Maddox]] suggests that because of the importance of her experimental results in Watson and Crick's model building and theoretical analysis, Franklin should have had her name on the original Watson and Crick paper in ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]''.<ref name="MaddoxDLD">[[#Maddox|Maddox]]</ref> Franklin and Gosling submitted their own joint "second" paper to ''Nature'' at the same time as Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson submitted theirs (i.e. the "third" paper on DNA).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ferry |first=Georgina |date=November 2019 |title=The structure of DNA |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02554-z |journal=Nature |volume=575 |issue=7781 |pages=35–36 |doi=10.1038/d41586-019-02554-z|pmid=31686042 |bibcode=2019Natur.575...35F }}</ref>

Watson's portrayal of Franklin in ''[[The Double Helix]]'' was negative and gave the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data.<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Elkin | first1 = L. O. | title = Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix | doi = 10.1063/1.1570771 | journal = Physics Today | volume = 56 | issue = 3 | pages = 42–48 | year = 2003 |bibcode = 2003PhT....56c..42E | doi-access = free }}</ref> However, according to [[Nathaniel C. Comfort]], a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Franklin's colleague Aaron Klug believed that Franklin "..was 'two steps away' from the double helix. After completing an analysis of her lab notebook, Klug stated that she surely would have had it.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-03-25 |title=Rosalind Franklin's Overlooked Role in the Discovery of DNA's Structure |url=https://www.history.com/news/rosalind-franklin-dna-discovery |access-date=2024-04-07 |website=HISTORY }}</ref>

The X-ray diffraction images collected by Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. While Franklin's experimental work proved important to Crick and Watson's development of a correct model, she herself could not realize it at the time. When she left King's College, Director Sir John Randall insisted that all DNA work belonged exclusively to King's and ordered Franklin to not even think about it.<ref>[[#Maddox|Maddox]], p. 312,</ref>  Because of this, the scientific community did not understand the depth of Franklin's contributions. Franklin subsequently did superb work in J. D. Bernal's Lab at Birkbeck College with the tobacco mosaic virus, which also extended ideas on helical construction.<ref name="Profile" />

===Eugenics===
Crick occasionally expressed his views on [[eugenics]], usually in private letters. For example, Crick advocated a form of [[Assisted reproductive technology|positive eugenics]] in which wealthy parents would be encouraged to have more children.<ref>[[#Ridley|Ridley]]</ref> He once remarked, "In the long run, it is unavoidable that society will begin to worry about the character of the next generation&nbsp;... It is not a subject at the moment which we can tackle easily because people have so many religious beliefs and until we have a more uniform view of ourselves I think it would be risky to try and do anything in the way of eugenics&nbsp;... I would be astonished if, in the next 100 or 200&nbsp;years, society did not come round to the view that they would have to try to improve the next generation in some extent or one way or another."

===Sexual harassment===
Biologist [[Nancy Hopkins (scientist)|Nancy Hopkins]] says when she was an undergraduate in the 1960s, Crick put his hands on her breasts during a lab visit.<ref>{{cite web|author1=Alicia Chen |url=https://www.browndailyherald.com/2009/10/22/women-in-the-sciences-still-struggle-hopkins-says/ |title=Women in the sciences still struggle, Hopkins says |publisher=Brown Daily Herald |date=22 October 2009 |access-date=17 June 2020}}</ref> She described the incident: "Before I could rise and shake hands, he had zoomed across the room, stood behind me, put his hands on my breasts and said, 'What are you working on?{{'"}}<ref>{{cite web|author1=Laura Hoopes |title=Nancy Hopkins' Keynote Speech Shockers |url=https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/women-in-science/nancy-hopkins-keynote-speech-shockers-19135206/ |publisher=Scitable by Nature Education|date=1 April 2011 |access-date=17 June 2020}}</ref>