Talk:Katie Bouman

Birthdate in infobox
I cannot seem to remove the "circa" from the Wikidata entry. Yoninah (talk) 12:51, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Circa is correct because news coverage has not given Bouman's date of birth, only her age. --31.48.186.149 (talk) 12:40, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:WEIGHT and "Katie Bouman is Jewish"
The Jerusalem Post says that Bouman "is Jewish," whatever that means--they give no supporting details. I see no source where Bouman herself says she is Jewish or that being Jewish is important to her. I think we should wait for more sources, and preferably less partisan sources, before adding "Katie Bouman is Jewish" to the article. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Good thing we have a reliable (non-partisan non-whatever) The Sciene Times to prove you wrong once again, sciencetimes.com


 * Your actions never suggested any antisemitic concerns whatsoever, HouseOfChange.
 * Cheers, 79.176.85.212 (talk) 18:06, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The "reliable nonpartisan" Science Times article (2019) takes much material verbatim from the J Post article, including its statement that Bouman "is Jewish." The website sciencetimes.com seems to be a Canadian project promoting science to elementary and secondary school students; it has no connection to the New York Times or UK's The Times. The Jerusalem Post article is enough of a reference for this statement in the article. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:50, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Update, 6 months later: Katie Bouman asked to have this removed from her article, saying she is NOT Jewish and has no idea why the Jerusalem Post said she was. So clearly in this case, JP was not a "reliable source" on whether or not Wikipedia should describe someone as Jewish. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Request from a new user
A new user proposed this diff, with the edit summary: "I am a friend of Katie's and am correcting some of the misinformation on the page. The statements about her religion are incorrect and she has requested her religion not be mentioned. I have added that she is an assistant professor of math, computing, elect. engineering and astronomy, not just math and computer science, and worked at CSAIL, not Haystack. Finally, her first exposure to the EHT was not in 2007, so she has requested this statement be removed."

reverted, identifying Jrfarah as a connected editor, and suggested talk page discussion. Because we are dealing with a new user, I thought I would move the process along by starting the Talk Page discussion. HouseOfChange (talk) 23:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi and, thank you for encouraging this discussion. I apologize if I'm editing the talk page incorrectly, as I am a new user. Katie has had to deal with a lot of misinformation following the black hole image release, some of which made it into this page. I am a friend of hers and I work with her on the EHT project (see Joseph Farah) . Regarding the changes: she did not work at Haystack at any point, but rather at CSAIL. This is often confused because MIT Haystack Observatory is a radio telescope similar to the ones we use in our network, and several of our colleagues work there, but she does not. I've provided her CV and links to press releases as citations. I expanded upon the subjects of which she is a professor at Caltech (electrical engineering and astronomy) as well, per her request, and cited her Caltech page, which has the accurate information. Regarding changes I cannot cite: she is not Jewish; it's unclear why Jerusalem Today wrote she was. She has never practiced Judaism and no one in her family has, as far as she knows. Per her request, I removed the statement. Second, she did not first encounter the EHT in 2007. In addition to that being quite improbable (the network was tiny and our earliest data-capable fringe detections of M87 were in 2009 ), she simply said the statement was inaccurate and so I removed it, per her request.


 * Thank you for taking the time to review these changes. Jrfarah1999 (talk) 23:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I will take a look at your edit, thanks for proposing changes and including RS citations. Others of course are welcome to do the same. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:42, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much and . Is her institutional information (i.e. her graduate work at CSAIL not Haystack, and her assistant professorship) open for discussion? For example, we can confirm her correct affiliation at MIT by examining any of her papers. This one, published in 2016, shows Haystack as affiliation 1 and CSAIL as affiliation 12. Notice that Katie (Shown as Katherine L. Bouman^{12}) is academically affiliated with CSAIL and not Haystack. I think this trumps any press release that lists her informally as a member of the Haystack team. Jrfarah1999 (talk) 03:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * My opinion on the religion issue is that we should err on the side of caution here and delete the reference anyway. A single source for this isn't very solid, and further: Katie isn't known for her religion at all, but for other things, so it's not really relevant to her article. I'm going to remove that sentence now, but I won't fight if anyone adds it back.--Jorm (talk) 02:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oosp looks like HouseOfChange got it before me. I removed the categories. Jorm (talk) 02:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Haystack, our article cites two sources. The first mentions both Bouman and Haystack but does not say that she was part of Haystack. The second is a book (not searchable online.) The source cited by is RS that makes clear KB is attached to CSAIL. I will remove the claim that she was part of Haystack and instead note her connection to CSAIL at MIT. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I changed her Caltech title in the body of the article. The lead needs more of a copy edit than that, especially since she got a new honor in September. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much (from both me and Katie) for being so receptive to these changes. The article is far more accurate now! Jrfarah1999 (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Mention
This article has been mentioned here. RodRabelo7 (talk) 23:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)