The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
There were hundreds of people involved. We couldn't have done it without the hundreds of people. While Art was a fantastic guy and a tireless worker, a good chunk of his contribution was management.
i.e. A competent manager. He not only understood all of the physics involved, but a good chunk of the engineering, along with having decent managerial skills. No one with skills solely in an MBA, or theoretical physicist, or civil engineer could have done it.
Even if he didn't win based on something he mathematically proved, there's no question he's one of the top physicists around.
If you look at the Nobel prizes as the "best of" awards, and not "the guy who invented something all alone", it becomes a bit more palatable.
On top of that, the Nobel committee is limited by the rules of their foundation. Even assigning Nobels for something done 5 years ago is arguably outside of the directions of the trust.
So yeah, the article isn't theoretically wrong, but it's wrong for practical purposes.
The article address this argument though and says that the Foundation has already stretched the rules.
That bit of the article is arguably misleading. The foundation is not stretching its rules in awarding it to three people. That stretching (from one to three) was done immediately after Nobel's death as part of the settlement of his Will, and enshrined in the statutes of the foundation ("nor shall it be divided into more than three prizes at most")[0].
Whether it's possible to change it now to allow more than three is a question for someone who knows Swedish Trust law.
[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundati...
No? Then the analogy is false.
The difference with physics (for example) is that when a paper has 160 co-authors (as in my experience) all of those people contributed materially to the result. They are all experts in the field, and they all understand the contents of the paper.
I'm baffled! I have read the will of Alfred Nobel before, but it never struck me that it doesn't allow for sharing of a prize. Here is the part of the will [0], in English translation, that deals with the prizes, for anyone who wants to read it:
> The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical work by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.
(It also says that the peace prize should be given to one person, not an organisation.)
[0]<https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html>
This "great man" view of history distorts our perceptions. It tricks us into believing any lone person can rise from nothing. The reality is that it takes collaboration, funding, and often privilege. People might be a little happier with their lives if they knew the "great man" concept is just propaganda, and that simply contributing to something great is a worthwhile aspiration. I know I'm happier for discovering this in my mid-life.
The recipients have been at pains to make the collaborative effort clear. One of the first things Rai Weiss (winner this year) said on the phone to the Nobel press conference today was that he saw this as an award for the 1000+ scientists in the (LIGO) collaboration. When a special Breakthrough Prize was awarded to all of us last year, with large prize money being given to Rai, Kip and Ron Drever (who died earlier this year and who otherwise might have been one of the three Nobel laureates today), Rai and other senior scientists spent the money funding grad students and other science activities [1]. They have given ample credit to the people that helped in their success, and they've shared their knowledge and resources with the newer generations.
Today, we're celebrating this as a recognition foremost for the three new Nobel laureates, but also to the other pioneers who didn't make the "final three", the diverse collaboration of scientists past and present who've been involved around the world in gravitational wave physics, and all the technicians and students that did the grunt work building the machines and lab experiments. While our names aren't all stamped on the medals, I for one am deeply satisfied to have played some (tiny) part in it all alongside these greats.
[1] http://www.ligo.org/magazine/LIGO-magazine-issue-11.pdf#page...
To have even played a small part in LIGO must be an awesome feeling of accomplishment and enable a true appreciation for collaboration with genius.
Congratulations on your (tiny) part. The effort that went into the project is mind boggling.
I loved how the ceremony was broadcast on TV, and the scientists, who are famous in their own field, walk the red carpet and are given the (literally) royal treatment for their visit.
I loved the clips where they show the award winners and family visiting places in Sweden - a bit like the background clips they show during the Olympics.
For this brief time, scientists eclipsed actors, athletes, and the other pop culture stars.
'Course that could have been just me. I do like a bit of absurdism.
Do kids today daydream of getting a Nobel? Science was a Pretty Big Deal when I was young. We were just getting started with space exploration and splitting the atom was pretty new. We kids talked about the breakthroughs we would make, when we weren't seriously considering our future career as baseball stars and how we'd enjoy our flying cars and robots.
My kids are all grown, so I can't really ask them what little kids daydream of. The kids my daughter interacts with are probably a bit too preoccupied to think about winning a Nobel.
I suspect that lots of us as kids had the same daydreams, self included, and I'm sure that many kids today with a love for science daydream about the same thing.
Kids probably daydream more of building new companies like Google or SpaceX. It's not that different.
The prize correlates with the interest. It's not a likely causal factor.
It's always important.
At night, I'd sit up with my back propped up by pillows. I'd tuck the blanket underneath my feet and tuck it in firmly by my sides. I'd prop a bit of the blanket out away from my chest and I was inside my imaginary monocock, doing laps at Monaco. I'd make the appropriate sound effects as I shifted and accelerated, braked and cornered at the edge of the envelope. Sometimes, I'd push it past the limits of the car and my own ability and would suffer the horrifying crash as a consequence.
Much to the dismay of the missus, I sometimes still do. I just don't usually throw myself off the bed as I imaginary crash.
I don't know about what to do about this unfair distribution of credit. Probably nothing.
It's much easier to be a contributor, than a founder/leader. The founders/leaders deserve more credit.
But what do we call it?
Nobel prices in peace are ridiculous. Not talking about (fake) Nobel prices of Economy that do not exist but have managed to buy themselves some recognition because the money printing of central bankers.
For me this article is absurd. If you have a better way of giving to science, create your own price with your own money.
Name one Nobel prize winner in economics with whom you disagree the awarding and explain your disagreement.
Otherwise your comment can be dismissed as another vapid "I disagree with the economics Nobel because the economic science sometimes disagree with my preferred political ideology".
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
The point is the poster above was trying to diminish the field of study's legitimacy. Reading between the lines of his post he was doing so because of his political leanings, not because he disagreed with any particular contribution of a economics Nobelist's contribution to human knowledge.
We should aspire to be above of such toxic ideologism.
I think we should aspire to be above reading between the lines. When we do so, we tend to see that which we want to see, regardless of the author's intent.
If someone had made up a fake Nobel prize in psychology I would diminishing the legitimacy of that too.
The field of economics is far, far less rigorous than any of the hard sciences for which Nobel prizes are awarded. The fake Nobel prize for economics is strongly disputed by much of the Nobel family, Keynes, and it makes economists act more blowhard, self-congratulatory and self-important than they already do.
I say this as someone spends a fair chunk of my time reading economics books and blogs.
Them credentials!
ok Apoorv, if you want credentials, here's Hayek's speech agreeing with me.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...
Matter of fact turned out to be that politicians and laymen only listen to the economics they want to hear, Nobel or not.
I read Nobel in Economics as 'Nobel in maths (largely statistical optimization) and behavioural psychology'. I personally believe the field adds significant value to society.
That said, I do think the award is rather liberally given away. We credit scientists only when their theories test out in practice with sufficient evidence whereas we are more willing to give economists a pass in the name of 'not enough data' or 'valid under certain conditions' . I think we should award only the fundamental time tested truths (statistical or otherwise) which are so entrenched in the way of the world that its discovery has little or no bearing on its exact function. This would award Nash/Selten but not Merton/Scholes. The basic option pricing ended up being just a bunch of really cool but limited equations which tend to be self fulfilling prophecies until when they don't.
(Also I suspect that there might be some linguistic misunderstanding here, maybe some participants are used to think in a language where the most common translation of "science" does not include the subset of social sciences?),
> I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.[...] the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.
> This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence.
> But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.
> There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.
That behavior which he describes... sounds like any Nobel Prize in Economics you know?
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[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...
> macroeconomics in this original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes [0]
This is largely due to what the US fed did in response (the US gov. fiscal stimulus probably helped some but not on the same scale). Luckily the fed was headed by Ben Bernanke, one of the most erudite scholars of the Great Depression at the time the world economy was hanging on by a thread.
Frankly, I think the Nobel prizes in the sciences are carrying the name.
Also, Aung San Suu Kyi won her Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, 26 years ago. How old is that? Well, that was the year that the world-wide-web was born. Kurt Cobain was still alive. George Bush was in office and was just 'George Bush', not 'George Bush Sr' (and the first Bush war against Iraq started in January). The Soviet Union still existed, dissolved only in December of that year. Street Fighter II hit the arcades. The Rodney King beating sparked the LA riots. The war that gave us the term 'ethnic cleansing' started that year in Yugoslavia. Apartheid was still going on in South Africa, with a couple of years left to go. Linus Torvalds announces Linux on comp.os.minix.
Calling the Nobel Peace Prize bullshit because a recipient behaves differently-to-expected a generation later is itself bullshit.
It was a "please prove you're not like Bush" prize. The election of Obama is the first time I've seen widespread parties with non-Americans celebrating the election of an American president.
Don't underestimate just how terrifying a lot of the world saw the willingness of the US to elect Bush not once but twice (now imagine how we feel about Trump).
One might argue Obama failed to live up the aspirations of giving him the price to some extent, and hope they learn from that, but that's a different issue.
> Aung San Suu Kyi--currently accused of genocide.
Two things: She is not generally "accused of genocide". There is a real argument to be made that she should not stay quiet, and that she is not doing enough, and there is the fear that this might be because she might even agree with the violence or have an antipathy for muslims, but to my knowledge there is no clear evidence about why she has remained quiet on the matter and certainly nothing to imply that she has personally been involved in making decisions on the matter. Of course that doesn't prove she is innocent either, but it's a bit early to start throwing around accusations she is part responsible for genocide.
Secondly, the price was awarded a long time ago. When it was awarded, she deserved it. Maybe she's changed. The price is very specifically not awarded for "lifetime good behavior" unless that is specifically the reasoning used by the committee, but generally for specific acts or specific service set out when it is awarded.
There might be an argument that it'd be better to hand it out posthumously so a persons whole life could be considered, but AFAIK the terms of the Nobel Prizes specifically prevent posthumous awards other than in special circumstances (which generally have been treated as if the award is decided before the Nobel Committee is aware that the nominee has died), not least because part of the intent is to encourage people to continue to do good.
This has famously "backfired" on the committees in the sense that for example Gandhi was nominated several times, and lost out in part because of concerns that were relevant at the time (e.g. in 1947 diary notes from the committee chairman shows that concerns over the Indian-Pakistani conflict were raised as objections for giving it to him at that time), and where the committee appears to have expected there'd be a better time to award it.
By the time of his death, and certainly for many years afterwards, an award would have been relatively uncontroversial, but the it was too late. Gandhi was nominated again in 1948, died right before the end of the nomination window, the committee considered it, since there were some degree of openings in the rules given the timing. But instead the committee decided not to award the prize at all that year saying "there was no suitable living candidate" - given that Gandhi was the only prominent nominee in 1948 that was dead when the decision was made it was a very clear message, but the committee did not believe they could award it to him posthumously.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11...
I first thought it was this one
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008JInst...3S8003A
which is also by Aad et al., but that one has a mere 2,926 authors (because it includes only the ATLAS collaboration and not the CMS collaboration).
Seeing all of these people listed definitely lends some weight to the "it's kind of unreasonable for only 1-3 people to win a Nobel for this sort of work" view for me.
(If I want to go into physics, should I first change my name to Aaalweachter?)
So, that suggests that you should not only change your name to Aaalweachter, but also be sure to work on the AARDVARK research collaboration. (Or found one if it doesn't already exist.)
But what is the alternative? The article doesn't give much detail; it just says, "Why not award the scientific prizes to teams and organizations, just like the Peace Prize can be? The price of reform is low, and the cost of avoiding it is high."
But this is clearly wrong. If you give the Nobel to a collaboration of 5000+ physicists, then you greatly devalue the Nobel prize. Either they are all laureates, including those hundreds of grad students who signed on for just six months, or maybe none of them really are. After the Nobel is devalued it will be nearly impossible to rebuild its status, or to replace it with another prize with equal status in the public consciousness.
The main problem described in the article is that the current system gives a "misleading impression of how a lot of science is actually done." I don't agree with this claim; anyone who has seen a picture or budget for LIGO knows that this isn't a one-man show.
And that is not the point anyway. The prize puts a human face on major scientific accomplishments. This is far more important than the possible downside of slightly misleading some people about how science works.
The effect would likely just be that a few theoretical advances could be nominated while experiments, even those that confirm the theories in question (Higgs, or this years prize) would go unawarded.
Or the awards would go to small discoveries that actually were made by individuals or small teams. Basically you'd see the largest and most groundbreaking discoveries go completely unawarded because they are group efforts, and since the price is directed towards the lone genius, it would be awarded for tiny discoveries.
It doesn't matter who gets a shiny medal, the only thing that matters is that we push science to next level. To help our understanding of the world and to help the people.
†since she has helped so many researchers, affected their lives, it shall count as well-beyond-lifetime
It does give visibility to science, which hopefully, motivates a few more people to grow up to want that achievement.
Personally, I think we need more prizes and “sports” for these endeavors:
But in the end, it was Nobel's prerogative to do what he wanted with his money. We can argue whether it would have been better if he had done something different, but it is what it is. It's not a reward by a government or any community or democratically elected organization where we really have standing to argue that it should be different, it's just a committee trying to follow the century-plus old will of a single person. If we don't like what it does, we don't have to pay attention.
I'm not a lawer, so I don't know is it possible to change Nobel Prize principles. All I want is to point to futility of blind following the old rule.
It's apparent that mainstream society sees it fit to uphold the tradition started by Aflred Nobel; so it's worth questioning what exactly is being sought after.
Science powers the whole world, yet scientist receives a very minimal recognition for it, either in salary or prizes. Nobel Prizes are basically the only way that scientists achieve a bit of that.
I am not sure if the discovery of gravitation waves can be of any use to us (other than perhaps stimulate funding for further astrophysics research, that is).
This discovery of gravitational waves is similar to the discovery of electromagnetic waves that has touched almost every aspect of our lives.
I'm sure there will be ways to use this information. Maybe not now, but it certainly might help when humanity eventually looks to permanently slip the surly bonds of earth.
The same is pretty much guaranteed for high energy applications of the strong and weak nuclear force like they are being explored by the LHC, although there it is less certain (quark gluon plasmas for example might be useful for something, maybe). Electromagnetic waves on the other hand are very compatible with the energy scales of human life.
Can you imagine what went into building the gravitational wave observatories? Don't you think that's advanced the state of the art with respect to the different kinds of technology, manufacturing, and construction techniques involved?
I support biomedical research. We're adopting scientific collaboration tools developed by the high energy physics community and specifically LIGO. These tools make it possible for large-scale, multi-institution, transnational collaborations to readily and securely share data worldwide. I'm really excited about what has become possible.
Admittedly, that has nothing to do with the detection of gravitational waves themselves. Still, these projects (and others) have improved the state of the art, and while it might not lead to something you can buy at Walmart any time soon, it might make a malaria cure happen sooner, or improve the quality of care for tuberculosis patients, or reduce the rate of breast cancer---little stuff that over time adds up to hundreds of thousands of people alive and well who, without all those little things adding up, wouldn't be alive today.
that's not to say ancillary discoveries with impact outside the original domain don't occur- they're just not as cost effective.
Ancillary benefits are, by definition, not the primary thrust of what research is about.
Apologies if I misunderstood your comment.
Yes, being part of the team is one achievement, being leader of the team is another achievement on top of that.
Sorry there's not "participation prizes" for everybody, but there are concrete important differences between being team member and team leader, as much as some seem to want to delude themselves otherwise and give themselves the "consolation prize" of feeling good, instead of getting the result (being the PI/project lead and getting the Nobel) they wanted.
Zero sympathy for the people who would want to Nobel, now trying to diminish the achievements of those who won the Nobel, just to console themselves. Everyone knows how science works. There are teams and PIs and projects and project leaders. Instead of crying that the reality is "unfair" if the complainers actually cared enough about winning, they would have tried to position their careers in such a way that they were competitive. To pretend you were disserviced when you know how it works is disempowering your own potential to have done better, and also really disrespectful to diminish the importance of Nobel recognition, to people who contribute to winning those prizes.
TL;DR - Looking at the group complaining about not being recognized, all I see is a bunch of sore losers, inventing disempowering reasons to console themselves, instead of inventing results for themselves. Take personal responsibility, be inspired by the achievements of others, these traits will help you win.
If you think, however, that the "sore losers" want to change the rules of the game solely in order to give themselves a better chance of winning, then there's something missing in your understanding of humans. People like fairness
I think the sore losers act entitled to something they didn't earn. I don't think that means I'm missing something about humans. Why would you want to suggest that? Your argument ought to stand on its own not by pretending I'm less. That's not nice. Nor kind. But, look, I am missing many many things in my understanding and experience about humans, and life, and every topic, because I don't understand anything completely or nearly so. And I've only experienced what I have in my life. I'm okay with that.
If you think people prefer fairness, then maybe you didn't face what I did, or maybe you just reacted differently (and if you did then you better teach me how!). I learned people prefer themselves, to fairness, and will cooperate or cheat as either pays off.
I'm no better than that. Let me show you: If you don't think the same way as me, then clearly there is something missing about your understanding of humanity, or your experience. See? I like to cheat, too. When it pays off. Or maybe it's fair to give like you get? What do you think, given that you said there's something missing in my understanding, was that comment fair and justified?
My view is both of us are missing many things about understanding and experience, and if we think differently it's just because we had different experiences and reactions. There's not one true way. And I think that's fine. Diversity right?
So if we can put all that nastiness behind us, what's our common ground, how do you think we ought to make the Nobel prizes more fair and still have them be effective? Do you think we ought to preserve, dismantle or alter the hierarchies and institutions that have worked for science? And do you think we can agree that "fairness" is not a universal good, and that in this case we have (possibly competing) interests such as progress, or effectiveness?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur...
They just got way too political.
Obama's is meaningless, even if you believe he did contribute materially to international peace (he didn't) he hadn't done so yet, with less than a year in office.
Giving it to the EU is just farce, in the same sense as "corporations are people." The EU is the result of the process the prize is supposed to encourage. It should be going to the people responsible for that institution's functioning - but good luck convincing anyone that its leaders have done a particularly good job navigating post-sovereign-debt-crisis, the period the prize would usually be awarding.
(I agree the award is necessarily political. I think it's better to say many recent awards have been tactical - moves in an attempt to bring about better relations, mostly unsuccessfully, rather than recognizing those who do really encourage them.)
I mean hell, on this page we have people complaining that the prize "only goes to three people when thousands were involved", and here you're complaining that "a group of people are awarded instead of a few individual". Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
I like both the EU and Obama, but don't think they deserve them.
Past controversial examples would be the 1935 award to Carl Von Ossietzky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky), who angered the type of folks that do not like people who reveal state secrets. Or Cordell Hull's 1945 award (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordell_Hull), which was controversial because in 1939 he rejected a ship of 936 Jews seeking asylum from Germany. Or Linus Pauling's Peace Prize in 1962 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling), which was controversial among those who disagreed with his left wing pacifist views (to the point where he was labeled a suspected communist in the 1950s, as was fashionable at the time).
(We haven't even gotten to Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat yet...)
Blah, blah, blah, I disagree with some perceived unfairness so it's all crap.
End of the day nothing is perfect, but encouraging people in awards like these push forwards the areas.
You want to push forward Science the Nobel Prize is amazing to encourage people.
You want your own new age everyone gets a prize award, create one.
Some of his criticisms are valid - e.g. discrimination against female nominees (although perhaps not the number of same) - but for the most part it seems to be a thinly veiled complaint about the concept of prizes in general.
They did this to originally award distinctions to conservative economists like Milton Friedman, though today they’re a little bit sneakier and will every now and then sneak an award to someone like Joseph Stieglitz.
You can read more about it in the somewhat sanitized Wikipedia article which only hints at the dispute that lies beneath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
EDIT: I understand the downvotes for the incorrect factual background. I want my main point to be the issue of economics not doing a great job over the last 30-40 years when these awards were begun / the general retreat of Keynesian economics in favor of Neoliberalism. That being said it’s sometimes mentioned that the peak of a scientist’s productivity is right before he or she gets the Nobel (Memorial) Prize due to the resulting fame, so perhaps other economists are to blame.
The bank isn't "a" bank, it's a Central Bank.
And it's Swedish, not Swiss.
Thanks for the correction or else I would have been misstating this fact for years, probably in less friendly forums than HackerNews too.
Also, no, not all the bad banks are from Switzerland, that's just prejudice.
1. Swedish, not Swiss. Both start with “Sw”, but, still, completely different countries.
2. And not just some random Swedish Bank, but the Swedish central bank (equivalent to the US Federal Reserve.)
3. And the first award was in 1969, which would be hard if it was made up in the 1970s.
4. The “real Nobel org”, as relevant to this discussion (there's actually four different ones) is the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which awards the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry.) Which don't just sort-of acknowledge the Economics prize, they are the ones who award it.
5. And, as requested by the bank which both endowed the prize and pays for administrative expenses related to it, the Academy awards it using the same standards as associated with the prizes funded by Nobel’s endowment.
6. While Hayek and Friedman did win the prizes in the 1970s, neither earlier nor later laureates were consistently identify with conservatism.
The idea that you seem to be pushing, that it's a right-wing propaganda tool issued by some other organization unrelated to the prizes endowed by Alfred Nobel that is merely “sort-of acknowledged” by “the real Nobel org” is simply not supported by the facts.
Interesting, I read it the other way, because of the "sneaked" later.
@Top19 also misspelled Stiglitz.
But yes, it was founded in a rather dubious way, and of course there's no obligation on the public to accept it as a Nobel prize.