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I have to admit ignorance of this whole affair. I've always been taught Watson and Crick, helical structure of the DNA molecule. You mean they pilfered it?

I have to admit ignorance of this whole affair. I've always been taught Watson and Crick, helical structure of the DNA molecule. You mean they pilfered it?

This account is fairly good. Watson, in his self-promoting rewrite of history The Double Helix, makes it sound as though RF had done her work to produce the micrograph over which he had his supposed burst of intuition with little clue as to its significance. This is just a flat-out misrepresentation.

Here is a portion from the piece linked to above:

Even a less acceptable alternative for Watson, although the most honest one, would have been to abandon his work on DNA completely. According to Sayre, there existed an informal agreement between Cavendish Laboratory and King's College that the DNA problem was the "property" of the King's College (Sayre 115). Neither Watson nor Crick was allowed to work on DNA (Watson 98). However, to a man as competitive and ambitious as Watson this choice was obviously out of consideration. [my emphasis]

Instead, Watson and Crick chose another path. They published their report on the molecular structure of DNA without ever acknowledging Rosalind Franklin's critical contribution to their discovery, thus stripping her of any credit that she deserved.

In his account of the discovery of DNA, The Double Helix, Watson is unethical, especially concerning Rosalind Franklin. Throughout the book he refers to her in a demeaning manner, calling her "Rosy" and "anti-helical" (implying that she completely rejected a helical structure for DNA). Calling Franklin "anti-helical" is not only inappropriate for a published work, but untrue. In mid-November of 1951 (two years before Watson and Crick discovered the double helix) Franklin gave a lecture at King's College. In the lecture, which Watson attended, she stated that DNA was probably a helix with the sugar-phosphate backbone on the outside (Gribbin 227). Watson unscientifically neglected to take notes at the lecture, and unethically neglected to mention this in The Double Helix. Instead, he discusses thinking, at the lecture, how Franklin would look if she "did something novel with her hair (Watson 45)." Also, Watson contradicts himself in the book. Although he saw no problem with using Franklin's work and giving her no credit, early in The Double Helix he discusses an incident in which Crick suspected that Bragg had used Crick's work without giving him credit. Watson implies that this would have been grossly unethical and unscientific, and concludes the incident by stating that Bragg acknowledged that the idea had occurred independently to both (Watson 37+). In these examples and countless others The Double Helix is so unethical and unscientific that Harvard University Press would not publish it, on account of the protests lodged by Crick and Wilkins (Sullivan xxvi).

Throughout the history of science there are example after example of scientists being rather ruthless and somewhat shady in the rush to publish and get credit. Beatrix potter first described the sybiotic relationship that is lichen- someone else took credit. Lise Meitner split the atom and didn't get credit. Debating whether Newton or Leibnitz invented calculus can be very lively, too. Those are the first three that pop to mind but there are scores of others.