As most of the Media is giving credit of the black hole image code credits to Katie Bouman, the reality is that she only contributed just 0.26% of the code.
Data provided publically on GitHub, Katie Bouman made only 2,410 contributions to the code that contained 900,000 lines to create the first-ever image of Black Hole, and 2,410 contribution to 900,000 lines of code means only 0.26%.
In comparison to Katie Bouman, to whom media is giving full credit for it, the real person who contributed the most was Andrew Chael, who wrote over 950,000 lines of code.
Meanwhile, CNN at once gave all the credits to Katie, with the headline “That’s where Katie’s algorithm – Along with other scientists – came in” This line triggered most of the media to take the news that Katie wrote all the code which was statistically incorrect after the official data was made public.
BBC even went a little further in claiming Katie wrote the entire code without confirming the official data.
Phys.org also went a little far by calling her a “Superstar“, yet again, without giving any credit to the scientist who contributed more than 90% of the code, Andrew Chael.
While most of the western media used her gender to provide a point. A famous Asian Publication, including published a truthful article, which made it clear that Katie Bouman was not the one who wrote the code, They published the article, “207 scientists in 17 nations and regions took part in the project” which clarifies that the project was assigned to many scientists but Katie played a very little part in it.
Even Katie Bouman made it clear on her facebook that she was not the one who wrote the code, but still, the media wouldn’t stop giving her credit. She wrote:
No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work” to capture the black hole image.
Katie Bouman on her Facebook account.
She further replied to one of the comments on the picture she recently posted, she said “Actually no, there were a number of us that all squeezed into the room and pressed go on our computers at the same exact time! We didn’t want person or algorithm to be the first one to make the image.”
She also praised the efforts of Andrew Chael and many other scientists who played a bigger part in Black Hole image code.
It was clear the American media was just posting the news for clicks and using Katie’s gender to get more people to read their publication. Complelety ignoring the official statistical data provided by the office itself, media triggered a series of unverified news all over social media.