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The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#11

Post by gonewest »

Koshkin wrote: post #3
EGreg wrote: post #2

Why not start a website where scientific discoveries can be linked to their uses on the one side, and on the other side to their contributors and former discoveries it is based on? Could be a wiki.

> uses 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).

Are you nuts? Without gravity waves how am I supposed to move the hand of my kid's watch in morse code, and transmit critical scientific data from beyond the event horizon of a black hole? And that's just the practical stuff we already know about... who knows what we'll come up with in a few years? :)

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#13

Post by davesque »

Koshkin wrote: post #3
EGreg wrote: post #2

Why not start a website where scientific discoveries can be linked to their uses on the one side, and on the other side to their contributors and former discoveries it is based on? Could be a wiki.

> uses 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).

I'm sure many of the early discoveries regarding the sub-molecular structure of matter seemed pretty abstract at first. Then came the atomic bomb.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#14

Post by adekok »

I was a collaborator on the SNO project. I worked with Art McDonald, who co-won the 2015 Nobel prize in physics for the project.

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.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#15

Post by mmanfrin »

d33 wrote: post #9

Personally I find peace prizes abominable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur... They just got way too political.

How is it abominable? And how do you propose advocation of peace to be divorced from politics? It is necessarily intertwined.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#16

Post by 1ris »

d33 wrote: post #9

Personally I find peace prizes abominable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur... They just got way too political.

It's supposed to be political, that's the point.

I like both the EU and Obama, but don't think they deserve them.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#17

Post by lutorm »

Alfred Nobel only wanted to reward people for making discoveries. There are many reasons one can argue that this is counterproductive (Like this article points out, science is not a single-person endeavor, but even more importantly is that it invokes a huge survivorship bias: You only get the prize for being correct, so someone else who did just as important work on another theory that showed that it was not correct will never be rewarded.)

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.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#18

Post by dragonwriter »

rhcom2 wrote: post #12
d33 wrote: post #9

Personally I find peace prizes abominable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur... They just got way too political.

Because it can't be awarded posthumously I think it is impossible to divorce it from politics.

Because it's fundamentally about a political objective, I think it's nonsense to even talk about it being divorced from politics, even if it could be awarded posthumously.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#19

Post by Top19 »

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them.

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.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#20

Post by bkcreate »

This seems like less of an issue with the Nobel Prizes and more that the author doesn't like prizes in general. Not everyone that contributes to a movie gets to go up on stage to collect the Oscar. There are always going to be problems with subjective awards in terms of leaving people out, people being overshadowed who would have won in other years, etc. I think the award does a good job of celebrating achievements that otherwise wouldn't be nearly as widely recognized.
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