Disproved Discoveries That Won Nobel Prizes (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Disproved Discoveries That Won Nobel Prizes (2015)

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111 pointswwarner60 comments

The Golgi case seems dubious. Golgi was wrong about the nervous system being continuous, but he did masses of other pioneering work in neurobiology and cell biology. He discovered the Golgi apparatus, which continues to baffle undergraduates to this day. He developed the staining technique which Ramón y Cajal eventually used to prove him wrong! I don't think the Nobel was given specifically for the idea that he nervous system is continuous, so it seems justified even today.

The joint nobel was awarded

> "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system"

Not cell biology, not lab techniques, but work on specifically the structure of the structure of the nervous system.

But they also awarded it to two researchers proposing opposite interpretations, so they obviously did not endorse his interpretation of a continuous nervous system.

Insofar as the committee endorses specific discoveries (Nobel's criterion was for conferring the greatest benefit on mankind), it notably did not endorse relativity in awarding the 1921 prize to Einstein, either. It has been argued that this was due to the indirect influence of Henri Bergson's philosophical- and intuition-based objections.

http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher-helped...

The committe went so far as delaying the award until 1922, saying, in 1921, that none of the candidates that year had met their standards.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/

Yes, and he did loads of work on the structure of the nervous system, including developing techniques, which is an inseperable part of scientific research, which was entirely valid.

I'm surprised they didn't include lobotomies in this list. That was a huge blunder. Otherwise, the Nobel committee has a pretty good track record.

This is of course because they wait for the dust to settle on these discoveries and for the scientific community to validate and build on those conclusions.

This is why there is such a large lag time between the discovery and the granting of the prize.

Many doctors, patients and family members of the period believed that despite potentially catastrophic consequences, the results of lobotomy were seemingly positive in many instances or, at least they were deemed as such when measured next to the apparent alternative of long-term institutionalisation.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Prevalence

Lobotomies do something, unlike the other cases in the article.

It's hard to disagree with these early criticisms though:

> it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier

and

> through lobotomy an insane person is changed into an idiot

Functional stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders is actively practiced.

The popular media is not a good place to get your information from...

"Functional neurosurgeons at UVa are currently treating: Neuropsychiatric conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression" https://med.virginia.edu/neurosurgery/services/functional-ne...

"We read with great interest the publication of Liu et al. [1 ]reporting results from the largest published series of schizophrenia patients treated with MRI-guided bilateral anterior capsulotomy with 2 years of follow-up. Let us specify that a series of 87 schizophrenic patients operated, notably, by capsulotomy - but associated with a cingulotomy, amygdalectomy or thermocoagulation of the nucleus accumbens"

https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/366005

http://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/divisions/functional.ht...

> Functional stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders is actively practiced.

Lobotomy is the removal of most or all of the prefrontal cortex. That its descendant is now called "functional neurosurgery" does tell you how disparaged and discredited lobotomy is.

It's not unlike nuclear medicine though, there was an early hype phase where it was applied too often[0], too much and without enough precision. The underpinnings remain in active use but at a very different level of activity, and with much more precise targeting.

[0] the US performed 20000 lobotomies during the 40s, mostly on women.

Odd to see Moniz' 1949 lobotomy prize omitted here.

See https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/articl...

This makes me very sad:

> However, I see no reason for indignation at what was done in the 1940s as at that time there were no other alternatives!

So, destroying someone prefrontal functions (which is basically akin to destroying their whole personality) was an acceptable remedy for schizophrenia treatment, because, err, we didn't have anything else? How can anyone even write anything like that?

When you meet people with severe enough schizoaffective disorders, you will start to feel differently.

Imagine being able to get someone off the streets and back on course with their life, without risk of relapse, with a simple outpatient surgery?

And the crazy thing is that we actually have the medical capability to do so. We just don't have the legal capability.

Because it is disputed whether it was "wrong" (in terms of effectiveness, not in terms of morality). It did achieve what it claimed. It just happened to be a rather blunt method of doing it.

The point of any medical intervention is to make the patient better. By that standard, a lobotomy is ineffective. Lobotomies "worked" by making patients deeply disabled, in a way that made them more manageable.

They performed one on JFK's sister: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

It's a very sad story, although that's pretty common for lobotomy cases.

Speaking of lobotomies, most people think of it is a fairly major operation that requires hospitalization, but there were actually people doing them on an out patient basis. You could get your lobotomy and be on your way home an hour later, thanks to the development of the "transorbital lobotomy".

Here's part of a letter written in the mid-40s by Walter Freeman [1], a well-known lobotomist, describing this:

> I have also been trying out a sort of half-way stage between electroshock and prefrontal lobotomy [to treat mental patients]. … This consists of knocking them out with a shock and while they are under the ‘anesthetic’ thrusting an ice pick up between the eyeball and the eyelid through the roof of the orbit [the bony cavity that contains the eye] actually into the frontal lobe of the brain and making the lateral cut by swinging the thing from side to side. I have done two patients on both sides and another on one side without running into any complications, except a very black eye in one case. There may be trouble later on but it seemed fairly easy, although definitely a disagreeable thing to watch. It remains to be seen how these cases hold up, but so far they have shown considerable relief of their symptoms, and only some of the minor behavior difficulties that follow lobotomy. [That is, prefrontal lobotomy, which typically involved boring holes through the front of the skull. The ice pick operation is called a “transorbital lobotomy.”] They can even get up and go home within an hour or so. If this works out it will be a great advance for people who are too bad for shock but not bad enough for surgery.

That quote is mentioned in this classic The Straight Dope [2] column, which includes more info and cites if you want more on this disturbing topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II

[2] https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/607/in-medicine-wh...

It is kind of looking like the prize for Dark Energy was awarded for a nonexistent phenomenon. The dust hasn't settled, but it will or should be very embarrassing if it turns out so.

The whole point of the article is that it shouldn't be embarrassing. The current dark energy theory is just currently the best explanation for observed phenomena (or was, I'm not sure what you're referring to). Even if it's wrong, the Nobel is still deserved even just for making that observation, because it encourages others to pursue science.

Not a practicing physicist anymore, so I may be hopelessly out of date.

This noted, I've been under the impression for a while that dark energy/dark matter is more likely a detailed accounting error. That is, it's likely that it is not a "new" thing, but old physics that we have an incomplete understanding of.

Science is funny that way. Early results considered groundbreaking are refined and extended over time. And sometimes, as we gain more information and comprehension, the effect we think we observed is subsumed into "boring" physics (this is how it was described to me by a friend).

I don’t know if there’s a huge difference between “a brand new thing” and “an old thing that is not interacting at all the way we understand it to.”

Nobel Prizes in the sciences do seem to withstand the test of time better than economics, literature, and (laughs) peace.

With actual war criminals winning peace prizes I do wonder what is the point of it. The value of an award is in the company it puts you in, now it looks like the peace Nobel is just worth its dollar value and its value on the TED circuit.

Well humans are human. Mistakes happen and as long as they aren't increasing over time, it's all cool.

Awards don't just exist to award the individual.

In polarizing times, where the instinct is to create more conflict as a path to resolving conflict, what many of the Peace Prize winners have done, is to remind everyone that alternate non-obvious paths exist.

Do you talk about war criminals being awarded the Nobel peace prize or about Nobel peace prize laureates turning into war criminals? This is an important difference in my opinion. Since you seem to follow this more closely than I do, would you mind giving an example?

Aung San Suu Kyi is probably the most recent example with a very dubious legacy.

> Do you talk about war criminals being awarded the Nobel peace prize or about Nobel peace prize laureates turning into war criminals?

For the former, Henry Kissinger.

There are examples of the latter, as well.

Holy hell, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize?! I'm was familiar enough with him to know he's disgustingly immoral, and never imagined people back then would have been stupid enough to give him that award.

With 2 members of the committee resigning in protest, it seems not everyone with power to award it was so morally corrupt.

Gorbatschow sent tanks on civilians in Vilnius just one month after being awarded the Peace Nobel

Obama pursued policies that arguably (https://www.amnestyusa.org/the-obama-bush-doctrine/) amount to war crimes, and refused to allow the obvious war crimes of the preceding administration to be investigated. He got a Nobel peace prize essentially for being less terrible on that front than his predecessor, George W Bush.

> But does the drone program amount to a war crime as Marc Thiessen suggests? That is a complicated question to answer. Unlike the use of torture, there are circumstances in international law and under the laws of war in which the use of lethal force can be lawful. Much depends on where, how and with what intent such force is used. We do not, as yet, have sufficient evidence to make a determination regarding the legality of the US drones program. It has been conducted in secret and in places where it is very difficult to mount an effective investigation.

Also there was a 1,200+ page Senate investigation into the use of torture by the previous administration.

It’s not more complicated. The same flawed intelligence apparatus which provided the lists of people to capture and interrogate during the Bush administration also compiled Obama’s kill list.

Neither method really provides any useful intelligence. The difference is victims of torture can go on ‘60 Minutes’, victims of targeted drone strikes can’t.

Obama certainly did not deserve his Peace prize by the time he was elected and continued violence in the Middle East, started new wars (such as Libya) and expanded the (secret) drone strikes.

Well to be fair he did most of those things after winning the Nobel.

Which makes it even worse.

The value in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to warmongers is — and the awarding committee is very conscious of it — that it has enough cachet to actually motivate warmongers to stop warmonging and go for the prize (and a relatively well-off, safe and calm retirement).

It may not be fair, but the people who don't die because of that effect won't complain.

Do you have any examples of this happening?

There are multiple instances of violent people who stopped being violent and got the prize. Arafat is one example.

Whether the prize played a role in their decision is something only they can say (and then you might not believe them).

So I find this question useless, because it cannot be answered. The mechanism I sketched is generally plausible, though.

There are also instances of relatively peaceful people who got the prize and became warmongers, e.g. a certain president of the us, who sent 500 drone strikes into Libya in a single year after winning the prize (among other military adventures)

How does that relate to the question in this sub thread?

Do you actually propose that they did violent things because they got the prize?

The prize may have given them political cover that let their violence go on longer

They only get the prize after stopping, so you're arguing for something more complicated: violence, then non-violence, then violence.

Possible, but not terribly plausible, IMO. And the examples proffered so far (Obama or Kissinger) certainly don't fit that pattern.

If there are as many examples of people receiving the peace prize then going on to be warmongers as there are the reverse, it suggests that the peace prize isn't really doing anything here and we're just looking at the base rate of leaders switching between peaceful and warlike actions.

No, that's a fallacy, unless you can credibly argue for a causal link, i.e. because of the prize people feel they can get away with violence.

I find that not impossible to argue, but incredible, and would want to see supporting evidence.

Yes, but that cuts both ways.

I only argue that there is a plausible mechanism, you argued in quantitative terms.

There is no Nobel prize in economics.

> The five real Nobel Prizes—physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and medicine/physiology—were set up in the will left by the dynamite magnate when he died in 1895. The economics prize is a bit different. It was created by Sweden’s Central Bank in 1969, nearly 75 years later. The award’s real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” It was not established by Nobel, but supposedly in memory of Nobel. It’s a ruse and a PR trick, and I mean that literally. And it was done completely against the wishes of the Nobel family.

> “The Economics Prize has nestled itself in and is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize. But it’s a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation,” Nobel’s great great nephew Peter Nobel told AFP in 2005, adding that “It’s most often awarded to stock market speculators …. There is nothing to indicate that [Alfred Nobel] would have wanted such a prize.”

https://www.alternet.org/2012/10/there-no-nobel-prize-econom...

Of course the Nobel prize for economics is a ruse and at least semi-fraudulent. That's the least surprising thing I think I've ever learned.

> It was created by Sweden’s Central Bank in 1969,

Well that will probably rule out any economist opposed to central banking systems.

Except it won't - for the same reason why Nobel donating the prizes for the other subjects doesn't rule out opponents of dynamite or high-explosives for the Peace prize. (I.e. the Royal Academy in Sweden gives out both prizes, the Nobel family and the Rijksbank are not involved.)

Huh? Wasn’t Nobel opposed to (many uses of) high explosives? Wasn’t that the point?

Milton Friedman won a Nobel prize. He didn't like central banks at all.

> There is no Nobel prize in economics

The Nobel Foundation [1] disagrees. That bank donated the money to establish the prize, but it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same organization that awards the physics and chemistry prizes, using the the same procedures.

[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/

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