If Franklin was not warmly forthcoming with her findings, she cannot be altogether blamed. Female academics at King's in the 1950s were treated with a formalized disdain that dazzles modern sensibilities (actually any sensibilities). However senior or accomplished, they were not allowed into the college's senior common room but instead had to take their meals in a more utilitarian chamber that even Watson conceded was "dingily pokey." On top of this she was being constantly pressed — at times actively harassed — to share her results with a trio of men whose desperation to get a peek at them was seldom matched by more engaging qualities, like respect. "I'm afraid we always used to adopt — let's say a patronizing attitude toward her," Crick later recalled. Two of these men were from a competing institution and the third was more or less openly siding with them. It should hardly come as a surprise that she kept her results locked away.
富兰克林没有热心地和别人一起分享她的成果，这也不能完全怪她。在20世纪50年代的国王学院，女性研究人员被一种先人为主的偏见压得抬不起头来。那种偏见令现代有感情的人（实际上是任何有感情的人）受不了。不管她们的职位多高，成果多显著，她们都不会被允许进入学院的高级休息室，她们甚至不得不在一个简陋的房间里就餐，连沃森也承认，那是个“既昏暗又狭窄”的地方。尤其是，她经常承受着巨大的压力——有时还不断受到骚扰，逼她将自己的研究成果与3个男人分享。那3个男人急于知道她的成果，但很少表现出相应的可爱品质，比如尊重——连克里克事后也承认：“我想我们老是对她——怎么说呢？傲慢无礼。”他们中有两人来自国王学院互为竞争对手的研究所，而另一个也在某种程度上公开站在他们一边。因此，富兰克林将她的成果锁在抽屉里，也就不足为怪了。

That Wilkins and Franklin did not get along was a fact that Watson and Crick seem to have exploited to their benefit. Although Crick and Watson were trespassing rather unashamedly on Wilkins's territory, it was with them that he increasingly sided — not altogether surprisingly since Franklin herself was beginning to act in a decidedly queer way. Although her results showed that DNA definitely was helical in shape, she insisted to all that it was not.
威尔金斯和富兰克林彼此合不来，沃森和克里克似乎利用这一点来为自己的利益服务。虽然克里克和沃森不要脸地侵犯威尔金斯的领域，威尔金斯却越来越站到了他们一边——这一点也不完全奇怪，因为富兰克林自己的行为变得很古怪。尽管富兰克林的研究表明，DNA结构毫无疑问是螺旋型的，可是她坚持对大家说不是这样。