Nobel’s three-winner limit does not reflect modern science

physicsworld.com

2 points·dotnet00··4 comments

1) The money prize

2) "if everyone is a winner no one is a winner" The prestige of the nobel is lost and we need competent figures to interfaces with the public, the fact that the contributions of every student is not recognized in THAT way is not a good reason to stop

3) Is not 3 where do you stop? "the entire city of Cambridge to receive the Nobel for helping developing a new x at the MIT"

On the other hand, it is pretty arbitrary for 3 people to receive the prize when the cause of the award is the verification of a prediction which was made by 6 separate people around the same time, with the evidence itself found by another large completely unrelated team.

Only awarding 3 people props up the idea that large breakthroughs in science are still the result of individual visionaries, when they haven't been that way for a long time and the complexity of much of the experiments far exceeds the capability of 3 people to be mostly responsible for.

Going back to the Higgs Boson example, why shouldn't the entire team at CERN responsible for developing and running the experiment that made the detection be considered nobel laureates?

Ok, you are right too and you have a valid point but we are BOTH right.

Now think about what decision would make the world better.

3 significant people who have a meaningful title or 1000 meaningless ones?

I get that it feels like the ""right"" decision to give everyone credit but what does that mean in the gran scheme of things?

Yeah I don't intend to say you're outright wrong, since simultaneously I can relate to the way the title of Nobel laureate has been inspiring, which it wouldn't be if hundreds of people could win it.

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