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It is ethically unsound.
are ethics man-made or „given“ to us by god, the watchmaker or the universe?
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That still belongs to strange or scientifically unsound.
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THAT SAID, "Eugenics" as espoused and understood over the past two centuries isn't that at all. It's 100%, every time, a pretty face for racism. Human social and ancestry divisions ARE NOT the product of deliberate selection, never have been, and any attempt to conflate the ideas is, yeah, pretty fucking unsound. And horrifying.
A lot of these aren't "strange or scientifically unsound ideas" but downright racism. Whether Nobel prize recipients are less or more racist than their contemporaries is debatable but I'm not sure they fit the same category as "believed in ghosts" or "claims to have talked to a fluorescent racoon".
The key point is it’s not just ethically wrong, but it’s not scientific because it’s subjective and has no basis in reality. For instance, you cannot use genetic studies to define a race because for instance, in Africa, you could have massive genetic diversity in people that are 200 miles apart. That doesn’t make them different races. If you did attempt to classify people into races based on something scientific like…
'Biologically speaking', wouldn't that 'just' be something like breeds?
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Yes, that's my point. Take any other award, list people who got it and had "incorrect beliefs", add an article about it and preamble it with "it is unclear whether it is an effect of the award". What purpose does it serve? Do you think there should be articles for all of those "diseases"? Nebula award disease Crossword Book award disease Turing award disease Pulitzer award disease Fields medalist disease et cetera?
The article mentions it later - journalists and laymen end up asking Nobel Prize winners their opinion on matters outside their area of expertise. We don’t do that with Fields medal winners. Mainly because most people don’t even know what a Fields medal is. I can’t write a headline that relies on Elizabeth Moon’s or Stanislav Smirnov’s borrowed authority because the average joe doesn’t know who they are. But that def…
-An expectation that because a scientist is incredibly good at one thing, they must be good at another, entirely different type of thing. This seems to uniquely apply to scientists.
We don't judge a phenomenal football player for not being an incredible archer, but then we do judge a Nobel prize-winning physicist for believing in astrology.
-I think this can sometimes be two sides of the same coin: The same divergent thinking that helps you make revolutionary discoveries (you're unwilling to take the status quo for granted) also makes you explore "strange" ideas.
Or rather, I see no attempt to make an argument that Nobel laureates are statistically _more_ likely than other "well-known" non-politicians to hold non-majoritarian ideas... nor any attempt to argue that the ideas followed rather than preceded the award.
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Yes, that's my point. Take any other award, list people who got it and had "incorrect beliefs", add an article about it and preamble it with "it is unclear whether it is an effect of the award". What purpose does it serve? Do you think there should be articles for all of those "diseases"? Nebula award disease Crossword Book award disease Turing award disease Pulitzer award disease Fields medalist disease et cetera?
The difference is notability, which is the criteria used whether a distinct Wikipedia article is warranted. There are multiple cited sources that use the "Noble disease" term, there are possibly much fewer similar publications with "Fields medalist disease". That is not to say that the theory holds water. Flat Earth theory is also notable and has a wiki page, even if blatantly wrong. There is no hyperboloid Earth the…
Among mathematicians, I wouldn't claim that "Fields medalist disease" is an unusual term, though this term is typically meant to mean "some mathematician got a Fields medal, but did not prove any other deep mathematical result afterwards". There also exists the much more derogatory term "dead wood" for mathematicians who once proved highly celebrated results, but after they got tenured, no they didn't manage to prove anything deep anymore."
Concerning the "crackpot undertone" of "Nobel Disease": lots of mathematicians know the names of achieved mathematicians who got into some eccentric ideas ("eccentric" in the sense of "outside the Overton window") once they got older.
Famous examples for the latter point are Serge Lang
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Serge_Lang&oldid=...
or Anatoly Fomenko
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anatoly_Fomenko&o...
> an informal term for the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise Sounds pretty much like every founder out there who strike gold once in the past now believing their genius now…
Mathematicians believe we're lucky to have been spared the Nobel Prize. While some repeat a discredited story this was because Gösta Mittag-Leffler was sleeping with Nobel's wife, it is generally felt that mixing ego and the possibility of a Nobel Prize has toxic effects on a field.
We now have both the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize, but both pass over the midlife period when ego eclipses talent.
Imagine a 5 year old who is good at basketball. His parents notice it and enroll him in a class. Coaches recognize his talent and dedicate special time to him. He trains every morning, every night and entire weekends through primary, middle and high school. Gets barely any time for classes, but he anyways just needs a passing grade (which teachers are happy to help him with). He joins advanced youth academies, travels for tournaments across the country. No time for distractions. No TV, no parties, barely any social time at all. He gets a sports scholarship in college. Finally goes pro. Continues training hard for every waking minute. Plays hard for years and is considered one of the best players in the world. Absolute peak of achievement in his field.
Then the night he wins a championship a reporter shoves a microphone in his face and asks "what are your thoughts on the geopolitical crisis developing in the East China sea?" And whatever he says will make the front page, generate countless social media clips and will undoubtedly influence the opinions of millions.
And this applies to every field. Look at all the VCs who make a lucky bet and then sit on a hundred podcasts proclaiming "world peace is easy, actually".