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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

#81

Post by greeneggs »

schoen wrote: post #35

The abstract of the 5,154-author paper that this article mentions: 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 we…

> 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.

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.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#83

Post by yyyyip »

VHRanger wrote: post #73
mkl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are technically no Nobel Prize winners in economics. I think that's what the comment was talking about. The economics prize is not a Nobel Prize as established by Alfred Nobel, it is the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences [1], established in 1968 by the Swedish National Bank. It is grouped with the others and awarded in the same ceremony, however. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_…

Sure, but he was trying to delegitimize the highest honor in a field of study. The economics Nobel is functionally equivalent to the Fields medal or Turing award, regardless of Alfred Nobel's original intent. 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 pa…

Why can't he, or I, diminishing the legitimacy of economics?

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.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#84

Post by apoorvkumar »

yyyyip wrote: post #83
VHRanger wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but he was trying to delegitimize the highest honor in a field of study. The economics Nobel is functionally equivalent to the Fields medal or Turing award, regardless of Alfred Nobel's original intent. 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 pa…

Why can't he, or I, diminishing the legitimacy of economics? 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…

> I say this as someone spends a fair chunk of my time reading economics books and blogs.

Them credentials!

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#85

Post by nostrademons »

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.

The peace prize has always been somewhat aspirational - the point is usually to shame the recipient into living up to the prize, not to recognize those who've actually most contributed to peace. The latter is pretty hard to do, because peace is the absence of war, and so "the people who most contributed to peace" are really the majority of citizens who mind their own business and don't seek to dominate others.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#86

Post by nostrademons »

WalterBright wrote: post #57
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.

I would have given it to Kennedy and Khrushchev for avoiding nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I would've given it to Stanislav Petrov for avoiding nuclear war in 1983.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#87

Post by fatjokes »

pipio21 wrote: post #54

For me Nobel prices in Science are one of the things that work better the way they are that most alternatives. 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…

Agreed. Nobel laureates in peace are basically bullshit. Look at Obama---good president, but how many drone strikes did he order, and Aung San Suu Kyi--currently accused of genocide. The Nobel laureates in science indisputably pushed forth the frontiers of human understanding.

Frankly, I think the Nobel prizes in the sciences are carrying the name.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#88

Post by felipemnoa »

KGIII wrote: post #75
eesmith wrote: post #61

I visited Sweden once, during the Nobel Prize award ceremony. 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,…

When I was a young child, I used to daydream about winning a Nobel. I didn't daydream about winning an Emmy or a Grammy, but I did dream of winning a Nobel. (And Formula 1 championship races, but that's not important right now.) 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 t…

>>When I was a young child, I used to daydream about winning a Nobel. I didn't daydream about winning an Emmy or a Grammy, but I did dream of 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.
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