I agree, it's ridiculous to give a Nobel to someone who hasn't done anything but win an election. Yes, Salk, and Einstein's relativities were astonishing oversights. Anyone have insight into why these happened? It's likewise ridiculous to rigorously enforce the folk age-limit of 40 for the Fields medal -- not in the charter -- which excluded Andrew Wiles at age 41. As for bogus prizes, let's not forget Rigoberta Menchu (originally reported to be "Rigoberto"): she later admitted inventing a great deal of her "non-fiction" book that won the prize. --Dan On Aug 27, 2014, at 12:16 PM, Hilarie Orman <ho@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
"Polio, An American Story," by David M. Oshinsky, Oxford University Press 2005, details the history of the vaccine research and the politics surrounding Salk and Sabin.
I mention this because I recently heard an invited talk in which a senior researcher admonished his community to consider the far-reaching effects of the scientific review process in determining what research avenues are pursued and how that affects thinking across an entire field.
Biases and politics are unavoidable, but they can do more than misdirect prizes, they often retard scientific progress.
Hilarie
From: "Gustavus Simmons" <gsimmons30@comcast.net> To: "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 10:53:54 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [math-fun] Bogus Nobel prizes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
I began my graduate studies (in physics)at the University of Oklahoma where the Physics Deaprtment Chairman was J. Rudd Neilsen, whose PhD advisor had been Neils Bohr. Neilsen's research speciality was Raman spectroscopy. Neilsen taught a course in Raman spectroscopy each year which he always began by saying; Raman spectroscopy is a physical phenomena discovered by a graduate student of Ramen's for which Sir Ramen received the Nobel prize.
The Nobel committee has not only made some errors in awards, but has made some really weird ones like the physics prize awarded to Nils Dalen for designing a regulating valve for the acetylene gas used in marine bouys. Of course oversights abound. The most obvious being not awarding the Nobel prize in medicine to Jonas Salk who discovered the first polio vaccine and almost eliminating what had been a worldwide scourge. Salk lived another 42 years after his vaccine was introduced so there was ample time for them to have awarded him the prize.
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