Frank Tipler doesn’t think much of the physics prize. Unfortunately, humans being humans, any such contest is going to be tainted by biases and politics.
8 thoughts on “Are Any Nobel Prizes Worth Anything?”
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Frank Tipler doesn’t think much of the physics prize. Unfortunately, humans being humans, any such contest is going to be tainted by biases and politics.
Comments are closed.
I’ve always been under the impression that even without bias, the selection of a single accomplishment from the life’s work of an entire planet’s roster of scientists, is bound to result in some choices that go clunk.
The discovery that there is bias only helps explain some of the clunk factor.
Yeah, but all of the people mentioned in Dr. Tipler’s article were at the very least involved with the science at some level.
Suppose Mr. Obama negotiates some meaningful resolution to the Iran crisis and receives the Peace Prize for that, only it was some policy wonk deep in the bureaucracy along with some counterpart in Iran who did the heavy lifting? Hey, I do not think there would be any problem. But this . . .
While we’re at it, is the Literature prize also pointless? I’m burned up that Albert Camus won it over Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen), who in my opinion is waaay better. Who has read The Stranger and Seven Gothic Tales and disagrees? I’d be interested to know why.
Well, there still is the prize money, even if a prize or few should be hopelessly compromised.
Heck, even when the prize is given for something decided in advance the prize committee can get it wrong. Read Dava Sobel’s “Longitude”.
I heard this assertion many years ago and have no source, but supposedly when Hewish was Jocelyn Bell’s thesis advisor he told her she should ignore those pesky repetitive signals because they were either instrument noise or interference from terrestrial sources.
There’s an interesting Wikipedia page on Nobel award controversies, but it doesn’t mention this assertion in the paragraph about the award to Hewish.
Mark-the good one-
I haven’t read that Isak Dineson book, but did you really read Camus’books….? I doubt it…you should…
I don’t think expanding the Nobel prizes is really necessary, nor is it desirable. Alfred Nobel laid out the fields he saw as worthy of recognition very clearly in his will, and additions aren’t possible because the purpose of the Nobel Foundation is to carry out that will. The only late addition, the “Nobel Memorial Prize” in economics, is not a Nobel prize and is endowed by the Swedish central bank rather than the Nobel foundation, and is still criticized whenever it’s awarded. Any new prizes would not be “Nobels”.