The Nobel Science Prizes: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Each year, our group gets excited to review and write about the Nobel Prize winners. It’s an opportunity to talk about science with the general public. While we discuss science during the course of our work, the conversations are often related to politics, the economy or foreign affairs. But for one week, the discussion turns to areas of science that the Nobel committee determines are exceptionally important and valuable. However, for all of the good they do to improve public understanding of science, the Nobel Prizes also have major issues. The laureate selection lacks diversity and rewards individuals, promoting competition versus collaboration in science.

While the Nobel Prizes’ spotlight on the merits of scientific research are noteworthy, so are the award’s shortcomings. One issue is the limited diversity of the science laureate pool, which was quite evident this year. All seven science laureates are men who conducted research in institutions located in Europe or the U.S. This lack of diversity in the Nobels has a long history: after 119 years, the 2020 cohort was the first team of women awarded the chemistry Nobel award. In 2018, the physics prize went to a woman for the first time in 55 years.

The lack of locational diversity also continues, even as the concentration of science and engineering research and development increasingly shifts away from the U.S. and Europe. Consider, as well, who does the research (and, thus, is invited to join the Nobel nominating body). In the U.S., most universities struggle to retain underrepresented, underprivileged students, who even as researchers disproportionately receive less public funding. Even with increased discussion about these disparities, it has been documented that scientific research is dominated by white, well-established researchers, to the detriment not only of the minority researchers whose work is built upon by others, but to the detriment of new research itself.

In his will, Alfred Nobel directed part of his estate be distributed annually to recognize “the person who made the most important discovery or invention” in the specific fields the Nobel Prizes recognize to this day. Since then, the scope of the three science fields has expanded somewhat, while the Nobel Foundation’s statutes increased the number of recipients per field from one each year, as dictated in Nobel’s will, to six— that is, three people per “work” and up to two works. A cap of three individuals per work seems antiquated in this age of multicentric, interdisciplinary and multi-generational research groups (e.g., labs run with postdocs and graduate students with the support of technicians, administrative staff and undergraduate students). Moreover, the cap does not consider the iterative process of scientific discovery, built on successive cycles of review, response and revision. One would seem hard-pressed to state that among three PIs, the breakthrough of one was exclusively their own doing, entitling them to be the sole beneficiary of the prize (even if dividing the monetary award three ways, with the laureate thanking their research team upon acceptance).

This focus on individual bursts of genius has a series of drawbacks that not only damages the public’s understanding of science but actually undermines science itself. It suggests that science progresses in only one direction, rather than as the cyclical process it is: test a hypothesis, revise to account for conflicting data, resubmit for peer input and tweak again as additional insights turn up. This disconnect between the public’s understanding of scientific discovery and the actual research process was made quite evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, as personalities and pundits “proved” to a sizable portion of the public how health authorities contradicted themselves, allegedly for spurious motives, overlooking — if not willfully disregarding — that, as data changes, so should our hypotheses.

The prizes’ focus on the individual genius can also incentivize skirting or even directly contravening professional, ethical or legal guidelines in order to be “the first” to achieve a breakthrough. This was a stated motivation behind the recent infamous case of a researcher who edited the genome of three babies as part of an in-vitro fertilization process. In order to claim to be the first to gene-edit a human by introducing a trait that seldom occurs naturally, he pushed a procedure that was not ready for the clinic and had limited to no ethical review.

While this is an extreme case, the race for claiming a breakthrough can have other insidious and enduring repercussions for science. It can undermine the basic nature of the scientific endeavor, namely, making progress through peer review and collaboration. It can act as an incentive for researchers to withhold data and secure advantages for themselves at the expense of junior or less well-positioned colleagues and students. This culture, in turn, can lead to the marginalization of student work. Moreover, secrecy and individualism in science can induce researchers to falsify or fabricate data in order to profess the verification of a hypothesis. This weakens the quality of research overall and hinders the actual development of breakthroughs. Worse, it creates the conditions for dishonest actors to make false claims, which can end up not only harming some individuals but even spurring enduring myths with implications for public policy.

Addressing these shortcomings would require a few changes to the nomination and selection process. These might not strictly follow the letter of Alfred Nobel’s will, but as described above (and expanded upon in our recent blog), the Nobel selection committee — or even the Nobel Foundation — could surely make a good case to follow past process adjustments with a few more updates. But of course, this will require some willingness to acknowledge the problem and to think creatively and consider more than one possible solution.

The nomination and selection process should be broadened to include more women, minorities and non-Western leaders in science. The bases for recognition of a discovery’s significance could include considerations for context — for example, the significance of the breakthrough in the context of circumstances at the time of the contribution. That is to say: the research nominated for Nobel Prize recognition has often been conducted several decades prior to the award, when the proportion of — and resources for — women, minorities and non-Western scientific centers was much lower. When taking this background into consideration, one should look toward nontraditional sources to make sure to capture those who attracted media attention as well as those who were overlooked, including from marginalized groups. The U.S. has a long history of excluding specific groups (women and Black, indigenous and other people of color) from certain professions (e.g., science, aviation). In science, this translates to valuable input and insights that never happened, or that did happen but may have gone unrecognized because, as described earlier, individuals in better-situated groups were the ones who made the headlines.

The inclusion of context could also indirectly help to address the lack of recognition of prior research, without which a breakthrough would not have been possible. But the nomination and awards should specifically help recognize those whose work preceded and contributed to the breakthrough. This could mean rewarding the entire research team involved and not just the principal researcher. By doing so, many more individuals would be recognized, and this would likely increase diversity, with graduate students and junior investigators who are women or belong to underrepresented communities sharing the spotlight. Or, this could require that those who helped plow the field in advance of the breakthrough also share in the recognition and rewards.

Through such changes, the Nobel Prizes could recognize a more diverse and larger number of scientists each year, while continuing to honor great scientific contributions.

Read more coverage related to the individual 2021 Nobel awards for medicine, physics, and chemistry. 

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