" 

 :A danger we face is that motivation to ignore details (we don't have to get into a complicated explanation about who knew what and when) becomes strong when the details do not seem to support the conclusions one has already reached. I think it is clear (from the huge number of books that have been written about the discovery of the structure of DNA) that there is a complex story to be told with many details. We need to resist the temptation to ignore the details and just allow Wikipedia to simply repeat politically correct conclusions that have been drawn by others. 

 :I think the only reason that there is a wikipedia article on Rosalind Franklin is because of her work on DNA, thus what is said in this article becomes an important part of of how Wikipedia discovery of the structure of DNA. Maybe there should be an article about the discovery as a whole. 

 :""I don't see what all this speculation about 'what if history had been different' has to do with finding references."" < The editors of this article have to decide what the article should say. In my view, these decisions should be based on understanding the history. When people start to speculate about 'what if history had been different' they are engaging in a natural way of forcing themsleves to think about the historical details and their significance. If you already think you ""know"" what needs to be said about Franklin then I agree that constructing the article can seem like it is only a matter of listing the ""facts"". My problem with the article (Sept. 25) was that I did not percieve it as being a list of facts. I requested a systematic reference check in order to try to make sure that the article has its facts correct. In my view, the only way of knowing if we have the facts is to think about the details of what was going on in 1950-1953.  "