Tag Archives: nobel-prize

Genetics, Noteworthy

Why we should abandon the Nobel prize

Here is  comes a concise overview of common arguments for abandoning or radically reforming the Nobel Prize system.
The myth of the lone genius
Modern science and culture are highly collaborative. The Nobel rules limit the prize to at most three individuals and exclude institutions or teams, which distorts how major discoveries are actually achieved and reinforces a hero-focused narrative rather than recognizing collective effort.
Distorting scientific incentives
The prestige and financial reward attached to the Nobel can encourage unhealthy competition, secrecy, and risk-averse behavior. Researchers may pursue topics perceived as “Nobel-worthy” instead of socially urgent or less glamorous problems, skewing funding and public attention.
Outdated and elitist structure
Created in the late 19th century, many Nobel rules no longer fit current realities: some fields are excluded, posthumous awards are disallowed, and selection processes are often opaque and dominated by narrow demographics. This can lead to Eurocentric and gender-biased outcomes.
Legitimizing controversial work
Some laureates have been associated with ethically problematic activities. Awarding individuals without thorough ethical scrutiny risks whitewashing responsibility and giving prestige to work that may have harmful implications.
Oversimplifying and politicizing knowledge
Prizes in fields like peace, literature, and economics can be deeply political. The Nobel can function as a soft-power instrument, promoting specific ideological views while marginalizing alternative perspectives or non-Western traditions.
Mismatch with how value is created today
The Nobel model treats discoveries as singular moments, but progress increasingly emerges from iterative processes, large teams, shared infrastructure, and interdisciplinary networks. The current system fails to acknowledge those modes of creation and contribution.
Alternatives and reforms
Possible changes include recognizing teams or institutions, creating rotating and more transparent juries with global representation, adding new categories for areas like environmental or data science, and shifting recognition from single results to ethical process and collaborative impact.

(c) chatGPT 5

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 11.10.2025, access 17.10.2025
Noteworthy

A Nobel prize for resilience

Another round of the elitist science carousel that stopped again for some underdogs…  wired.co.uk

She recalls spending one Christmas and New Year’s Eve conducting experiments and writing grant applications. But many other scientists were turning away from the field, and her bosses at UPenn felt mRNA had shown itself to be impractical and she was wasting her time. They issued an ultimatum, if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, and face a substantial pay cut.
”It was particularly horrible as that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer,” said Karikó. “I was facing two operations, and my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card, had got stranded there because of some visa issue, meaning he couldn’t come back for six months. I was really struggling, and then they told me this.”

Continue reading A Nobel prize for resilience →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 3.10.2023, access 17.10.2025
Philosophy

The Nobel Prize violates a central paradigm of science

With the current hype around prize winners, we may not forget about the much larger number of scientists who have been never honored or even lost their live for doing good science.

The Nobel Prize violates a central paradigm of science that false opinions are always corrected, see also the summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies.

So this is not so much about the recent scandal around the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, Urban Lendahl, who resigned due to the Macchiarini scandal.

Or about the recent Astra Zeneca money behind the nomination of Harald zur Hausen. I am thinking here about cruel treatments for example

1927 “for the discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica” to Julius Wagner-Jauregg

1949 to Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz “for the discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses”.

The refrain is a familiar one that there are no isolated geniuses but (Atlantic), it

reinforces a flawed reward system in science in which the winner takes all, and the contributions of the many are neglected by disproportionate attention to the contributions of a few.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 9.10.2020, access 17.10.2025
Joke, Philosophy

Is the Nobel prize predictable?

To be a Nobel candidate may be predictable if I am reading correctly a paper on archiv.org. The “traditional” impact factor is largely useless

as it ignores the importance of citing papers: a citation from an obscure paper is given the same weight as a citation from a ground-breaking and highly cited work

It may be, however, that the (PageRank derived) CiteRank is holding some promises – giving weight by whom you are cited. In this case, even a 100 citation paper can lead to a Nobel prize.
But is it predictable to get a Nobel prize candidate? Certainly not. I agree with a news feature about a science manager who

recently read Outliers, a book in which Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that
exceptional people get where they are partly because of the exceptional circumstances in which they find themselves, rather than through exceptional ability or sheer hard work.

Yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 24.02.2009, access 17.10.2025
Philosophy

Can anybody become a Nobel Prize winner?

Anders Sandberg attended a seminar in Stockholm and has written an interesting report. I have doubts if we have so much need for heroes. There are so many prizes that you can apply for – an impressive list of prizes and honours that you can find at the CVs of some laureates: Albert Lasker Award, Paul Ehrlich Prize, and many, many more. Google returns 60.100.000 hits if you search for “science prize” and there is now even the European database of science prizes that will find a prize for every scientist. Yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 14.11.2006, access 17.10.2025