I understand your viewpoint. She has the tile and everything. But then they should do an article on the method then if its new, not the trivial results.
Most people are more interested in results than methods. Do you care how a microwave works? Probably not as long as your food is heated correctly. This blog is aimed at the layman and is not a science journal. Chances are the real journals these findings were posted in are many, many pages long thick reading full of the methods and details that allowed this conclusion to be found.
That’s where Hill enters the picture. In the absence of good clinical data to model latent HIV and predict its interactions with different compounds, this NIH Director’s Early Independence awardee develops and applies mathematical tools to predict which compounds have the best shot at working, as well as to inform the design of clinical trials.
The article isn’t about the fact that she decided to do math, it’s about the fact that the math will be saving other researchers tons of time and effort by helping them figure out where to best focus their research. It also helps streamline clinical trials by giving them more direction. If it had been a man doing it, it would have been of equal interest to science.
The 99.9% wipeout bit is just a fraction of the model being used to help keep the layman interested in the article. I’m not so sure that any non-scientist would want to hear some long mathematical tirade about how to research an anti-retroviral so the author wisely selected a very simple example of the stuff the design has found. This example also illustrates why HIV is so hard to fight: it goes latent for long time periods and pretty much all of it needs to be ferreted out and destroyed for the patient to recover.
Just because a researcher mentioned is female doesn’t make an article feminist. If the article rants about how her being female makes her “Special” or “better”, then it is feminist. This article makes a bigger deal about her age and doesn’t really mention her gender outside of pronouns, so I feel it’s actually geared at encouraging young folks that science is “cool” and that they can make a difference and not at praising women in general.
You may have heard about young mathematicians who’ve helped to design cooler cars, smarter phones, and even more successful sports teams. But do you know about the young mathematician who is helping to find a cure for the estimated 35 million people worldwide infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)? If not, I’d like to introduce you to Alison Hill, a mathematical biologist at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Recognized this year by Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 as one of the most important young innovators in healthcare, Hill is teaming with clinicians to develop sophisticated mathematical tools
As you can see in the quote, her gender is only mentioned in passing. It’s not a big deal that she’s a woman, but they really are focusing on her age. If she was a man, the article would read the same! Tell the feminists this is what equality looks like. Nah, they’d stop reading as soon as they found the poster’s gender.
Beauty fades, dumb is forever.
Umbreon 4 years, 6 months ago.
