We’ve got a question going around: it’s been a good year for Europe in the Nobel Prizes, so what does it mean for American science? Are we slipping? Is there a European bias?
I’m going to go way out here on a limb and say the obvious: it means nothing at all. Winning a Nobel does have a political element to it, of course, but the people who win these things usually have a track record of decades of work, and the Nobel is just the most prominent tip of the iceberg of the scientific enterprise. It’s hard to judge trends in the foundations of research from the year-to-year vagaries of what’s going on at the pinnacle.
Also, this is no surprise. Europe is a big place with its own huge investment in research, and a longer history of success in basic science as a whole than the US. There is absolutely nothing to be shocked about when Europeans dominate the Nobel Prize in one year, or several; these are our colleagues, and we are all working together in science. In my own discipline of developmental biology, the powerhouses of the field, from Roux to Spemann to Nüsslein-Volhard, have strong contingents of European researchers, and I am entirely unconcerned about the mere nationality of the winners.
As Abel mentions, Nobel-winning research is usually going to have a lead time of decades. The people who are going to win the prize in 20-30 years are young researchers building up labs right now; the ones who are going to win in 40-50 years are working their way through the public schools and colleges. If you want to know where the signatures of good health in a country’s scientific institutions lie, that’s where you’ve got to look today, not in who’s winning now. The current crop of Nobelists tell us more about the status of science in the 70s and 80s.
That’s what I worry about. I see good researchers struggling to get basic support for their work. I see the high schools churning out students who don’t know simple trigonometry, and who think evolution is just a guess. Don’t look to a few big prizes to sense how science is going in America, look to the ranks of college freshmen. And there I see cause to be concerned: there are just as many bright students as there have ever been, but many of them are handicapped by substandard educations, or by the recent peculiar biases in our educational system that emphasize rote mastery of predetermined facts rather than depth of understanding.
I’m not optimistic. The Nobels have nothing at all to do with it, though.
Although there is one thing to be optimistic about: if science falters in the US, we can hope it continues in Europe and Asia and Australia and Canada. Science is not some parochial custom with an American flavor, after all.
Yeah- but us Euros still get to gloat a little right?
It is possible that the Nobels have overlooked the US this time around because of their irritation at Bush. I don’t know- but awards of any type involve political considerations.
Well- we’re going to find out in 5 hours whether Al Gore has won the peace prize. (I’m hoping he does, purely to outrage the conservatives.)
I agree that we can’t infer much about the current dominance of Europeans in the Nobels. But what if twenty years from now European domnance is the rule rather than an exception? At that point I’d say we could say that current disdain for science education was the cause.
Welcome to the Future, America. At this rate we can at best hope to be a second-tier high-tech manufacturing economy. Our basic freedom (if we still have it) will mean tht there’s still some innovation going on here, but at best we will be a slightly lower priced manufacting center for tech developed elsewhere as we will have lost the lead in basic science.
Well said!
Science will still get done – and done well – if not in this country.
How comfortable are you in using this information to ‘frame’ the discussion about science and national competitiveness? Couldn’t it result in a boost in allocations to research and education?
It worked for Sputnik.
On the other hand, the threat of fewer rich scientists is a little different than the idea of intercontinental missiles…
I guess I’m one of those recent “bright students”. And even though I escaped the secondary schools just before No Child Left Behind took effect, I doubt it was much different for me than it is for current students. My parents were (and are) fundies (old earth creos, I would guess, but they’ve probably never thought about the age of the earth), hence so was I, at least nominally, until I was 18.
In high school, the only exposure I had to evolution was about a day in 8th grade social studies (not even actually high school). Freshman biology brushed upon it so lightly that I didn’t even see any contradiction with what my parents and church were spewing.
My views changed in my first year of college, not because of anything I encountered in classes, but a combination of nagging doubts, my first regular internet access, and an (apparently) atheist roommate who liked to debate as much as I did.
I think our school system is mostly worthless. It’s probably worse than worthless – I’ve learned far more outside of school than I ever did when I was in it. I knew how to read before kindergarten; if I’d just been allowed on the internet instead of having to go to school, I’m willing to bet I’d be much more knowledgeable than I am now.
And if schools actually provided, you know, some actual education, I’d probably be well on my way to becoming some flavor of scientist or mathematician. As it stands now, I love what I do, but I’ll always wonder “what if”.
Clearly those wily Europeans knew what they were doing when they exiled all those religious wackos to the New World.
Well played, Europe, well played.
I’m going to go way out here on a limb and say the obvious: it means nothing at all.
gees, even Olympic medals get you endorsement deals.
#5
And yet the Europeans didn’t seem to see it coming that those exiles in most instances would declare themselves traitors to their mother/fatherlands and abscond with the New World resources and all the investments made by the Europeans to access them.
Histories are written by the victors to put themselves in the best possible light, no?
Bechamel, you’re too young to be wondering What if. When you understand that this is the only life we get, you’ll realise the only flavour to shoot for is “all-dressed”.
You right there is no suprise because like you said “Europe is a big place with its own huge investment in research, and a longer history of success in basic science as a whole than the US”
No doubt politics creep in even if the committee are motivated to stay away from it. The science committees are generally bona fide scientists, and AFAIU all the material such as incoming nominations and the meeting transcripts are released after a few years. (25 years I think, so the current generation scientists can’t use it to predict the committee behavior in order to change their own.)
The peace prize certainly seem to have this problem for other reasons.
(I’m not going to blame the peace prize committee just because it is norwegian instead of swedish – much. :-P Hey, did you know that norwegians have a special sign in their traffic circles – “Max 8 turns”.)
Then it depends on what you mean by politics. For example, I believe some have argued that Einstein didn’t get his prize for his work on relativity specifically because of postwar sentiment against Germany. But IIRC there was a recent book where the author worked through the material and noted that the main reason was that the philosopher on the committee intensely worked against it.
Probably because his Uppsala school of analytical philosophy, then strong, was against relativity’s philosophical implications in the light of their then strife with continental philosophy. (Another good reason why philosophers should get their fingers out of science.)
In any case, if you think politics of different kinds affect the process, there is plenty of data that can test your theory.
No doubt politics creep in even if the committee are motivated to stay away from it. The science committees are generally bona fide scientists, and AFAIU all the material such as incoming nominations and the meeting transcripts are released after a few years. (25 years I think, so the current generation scientists can’t use it to predict the committee behavior in order to change their own.)
The peace prize certainly seem to have this problem for other reasons.
(I’m not going to blame the peace prize committee just because it is norwegian instead of swedish – much. :-P Hey, did you know that norwegians have a special sign in their traffic circles – “Max 8 turns”.)
Then it depends on what you mean by politics. For example, I believe some have argued that Einstein didn’t get his prize for his work on relativity specifically because of postwar sentiment against Germany. But IIRC there was a recent book where the author worked through the material and noted that the main reason was that the philosopher on the committee intensely worked against it.
Probably because his Uppsala school of analytical philosophy, then strong, was against relativity’s philosophical implications in the light of their then strife with continental philosophy. (Another good reason why philosophers should get their fingers out of science.)
In any case, if you think politics of different kinds affect the process, there is plenty of data that can test your theory.
Do you think they’d take the Fort Mac oil sands if we offered? I don’t think Alberta can handle any more
roughnecks hopped up on crack and escortseconomic boom.Hmm, maybe it was this thesis that argued against the book, or it is independent support.
It nuances my picture and show errors of mine.
Axel Häggström, the founder of the positivistic Uppsala school and having a chair in ‘practical philosophy’, and his coworker Adolf Phalén having a chair in ‘theoretical philosophy’, rejected metaphysics. Their very insistence with the attacks on relativity led to their marginalization when debating the continental Vienna school.
And neither was member of the prize committee. (So I can assume it is all scientists, making more sense.) They influenced the swedish academy, and the physicists themselves have to share the blame for the confusion between the boundaries of science and philosophy.
But the Uppsala School (US) had its good sides too. (Well, rejecting metaphysics is basically a good idea, at least for scientists. But US botched that terribly and dragged it instead into the academic sphere.)
One of its disciples, perhaps the best known, was Ingemar Hedenius. It was he who more or less single-handedly shamed the swedish churches away from making claims on rationality and knowledge of nature in the last 60 or so years, and contributed to separate the study of religion (‘science of religion’) from the theology swamp. Yay!
Hmm, maybe it was this thesis that argued against the book, or it is independent support.
It nuances my picture and show errors of mine.
Axel Häggström, the founder of the positivistic Uppsala school and having a chair in ‘practical philosophy’, and his coworker Adolf Phalén having a chair in ‘theoretical philosophy’, rejected metaphysics. Their very insistence with the attacks on relativity led to their marginalization when debating the continental Vienna school.
And neither was member of the prize committee. (So I can assume it is all scientists, making more sense.) They influenced the swedish academy, and the physicists themselves have to share the blame for the confusion between the boundaries of science and philosophy.
But the Uppsala School (US) had its good sides too. (Well, rejecting metaphysics is basically a good idea, at least for scientists. But US botched that terribly and dragged it instead into the academic sphere.)
One of its disciples, perhaps the best known, was Ingemar Hedenius. It was he who more or less single-handedly shamed the swedish churches away from making claims on rationality and knowledge of nature in the last 60 or so years, and contributed to separate the study of religion (‘science of religion’) from the theology swamp. Yay!
Hmm, maybe it was this thesis that argued against the book, or it is independent support.
It nuances my picture and show errors of mine.
Axel Häggström, the founder of the positivist Uppsala school and having a chair in ‘practical philosophy’, and Adolf Phalén having a chair in ‘theoretical philosophy’, worked against metaphysics. Their very insistence with the attacks on relativity led to their marginalization when debating the continental Vienna school.
And neither was member of the prize committee. (So I can assume it is all scientists, making more sense.) They influenced the swedish academy, and the physicists themselves have to share the blame for the confusion between the boundaries between science and philosophy.
But the Uppsala School (US) had its good sides too. (Well, rejecting metaphysics is essentially a good idea, at least for scientists. But US botched that terribly and instead dragged metaphysics into the academic sphere.)
One of its disciples, perhaps the best known, was Ingemar Hedenius. It was he who more or less single-handedly shamed the swedish churches away from making claims on rationality and knowledge of nature in the last 60 or so years, and contributed to separate the study of religion (‘science of religion’) from the theology swamp. Yay!
Hmm, maybe it was this thesis that argued against the book, or it is independent support.
It nuances my picture and show errors of mine.
Axel Häggström, the founder of the positivist Uppsala school and having a chair in ‘practical philosophy’, and Adolf Phalén having a chair in ‘theoretical philosophy’, worked against metaphysics. Their very insistence with the attacks on relativity led to their marginalization when debating the continental Vienna school.
And neither was member of the prize committee. (So I can assume it is all scientists, making more sense.) They influenced the swedish academy, and the physicists themselves have to share the blame for the confusion between the boundaries between science and philosophy.
But the Uppsala School (US) had its good sides too. (Well, rejecting metaphysics is essentially a good idea, at least for scientists. But US botched that terribly and instead dragged metaphysics into the academic sphere.)
One of its disciples, perhaps the best known, was Ingemar Hedenius. It was he who more or less single-handedly shamed the swedish churches away from making claims on rationality and knowledge of nature in the last 60 or so years, and contributed to separate the study of religion (‘science of religion’) from the theology swamp. Yay!
Al Gore for the win!
To be honest, I’m not sure if he really deserved it- he is after all just a publicist for the science that has been done.
Anyway- this is going to really annoy the conservatives. Watch this get spun out of existence.
Well, looks like the US got the Peace prize: The news ticker on the BBC’s site is saying that Al Gore and the IPCC are sharing the prize, and the nobel prize site is now saying the same thing.
“Al Gore for the win!
To be honest, I’m not sure if he really deserved it- he is after all just a publicist for the science that has been done.”
Well he does get to share it with about a thousand other scientists. But yes he does deserve it – because he was hammering away at global warming before he was vice president. How different life would be now if Clinton had resigned when the scandel started – let Gore run the country for a couple of years and if he did not mess up he would have been a shoo-in. It was really obvious. But I doubt public over personal good exists as a concept for politicians.
Sailor: Well- maybe I was a little harsh- but to be fair, the US is the biggest holdout in the world when it comes to global warming. The rest of the world already appreciates the dangers of global warming- we didn’t need a movie, an Oscar and a Nobel prize to convince us.
I’ve been arguing for a while that the Nobels show that U.S. public schools can be effective (at my blog, for example). It’s a matter of time, I’ve thought, until our lead dwindles as the assaults on public education grow more successful.
But I didn’t think it could happen this fast.
Next year in Stockholm. Just wait.
Congrats to Al Gore. Now it’s time for the character assassination/spin to begin. Let’s hear about him using an airplane to get to the ceremony, or about how he built himself a really big house. Ignore the donation of the $1.5 million he’s making.
If someone is willing to donate $1.5 million to a cause, I would seriously consider that maybe they really do believe in it. But you just know we’ll be hearing about what a hypocrite he is over the next week or so.
“Winning a Nobel does have a political element to it, of course, …”
No kidding, Yasser Arafat, Al Gore.
“but the people who win these things usually have a track record of decades of work”
Well a track record of decades of work against peace in the case of Arafat. What the hell producing a hyperventilating chicken-little video on global warming has to do with peace I will never know.
I can really understand some of the other winners like working against land mines and working on peace in Northern Ireland. Many of them look like attempts to make digs at the US.
Why does Gorby get credit for ending the cold war but not Reagan for instance? Funny thing is that it’s accurate since it was really the U.S.S.R. that was responsible so only they had the power to stop doing what they were doing.
“Europeans, Schmeuropeans”. It was Germans who won in Chemistry and Physics. I would argue that with some notable exceptions, there is relatively little “European” science going on, most funding etc is still done on the national level since no country is willing to give up much control over its basic science funding. At any rate if you watch the increasing number of publications coming out of China over the past few years, I think in 30 years or so China will be the dominant force in science.
Sometimes the lag time is incredibly short.
As I note in my book in Facts On File’s newly published Twentieth-Century Science series, Physics: Decade by Decade (click my name for details), the 1986 Physics Nobel was shared by the inventor of the electron microscope (a long lag) and the inventors of the scanning tunneling microscope (a brand new invention whose potential was recognized immediately).
Then the next year (1987), the Physics Nobel went to research that was brand new, high-temperature superconductivity.
Both of those fast-track awards went to German and Swiss researchers working in the Zurich lab of an American-based company, IBM.
@Umilik:
There is so little “European” science going on that there is such a thing as a “European Molecular Biology Laboratory” (EMBL), a European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) etc.
mario capecchi works in the us, does that count?
he’s going to speak today at university of pittsburgh, where i work, coincidentally. he let us use some of his hox d10 knockout mice, do i count them when i calculate my degrees of separation from him?
Yes, perhaps because the Nobel committee, realized that Reagan had diddly to do with their collapse and end of the Cold War. Russia, like empires throughout history, imploded on their own arrogance, corruption, greed and economic instability (the same way the U.S. will go down). The Nobel committee was merely recognizing “Gorby’s” novel (for a Russian) positions.
I concur with PZ on both counts; I am not optimistic about the future of science in the U.S. and it has nothing to do with pattern of Nobel awards.
The collapse of the Soviet bloc was a remarkably peaceful affair, with relatively little strife, and we have Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership to thank for that.
Reagan had nothing to do with it, especially as most of the collapse occurred during is successor George Bush I’s Presidency.
That being said, I’m perplexed at the personality cult of Ronald Reagan among right-wingers. What’s so great about him? He seems like some airhead who was expert at seeming like some great hero.
It’s alomst like right-wingers are saying:
Thank you, Reagan. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Reagan two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Reagan, our inspired leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.
(original by A.O. Avdienko)
I agree – science does not know or care about boundaries. I find the resurgence of scientific research in Asia (China & India primairly) to be very heartening. For far too long has human potential been suppressed in these two countries with an otherwise rich educational tradition. What the US excels in is practical, inventive applications of basic science. As far as I can tell, this aspect of American culture has not yet died out..:-)
I have a hockey teammate who’s a research chemist, and he was commenting on the fact that all the Nobel laureates he knows are really good people as well as good scientists — and told a story about a guy who deserved the prize in the early nineties and didn’t win because he was a dick. Apparently he cleaned up his act and won it ten years later.
I think I rather like that method of biasing the voting.
Judging the state of a country’s scientific enterprise by its Nobel laureates looks to me like reification: treating the extreme edge of a distribution as a thing unto itself. As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, the disappearance of the .400 hitters only makes sense when you look at how the entire curve changes over time.
You’ve gotten right to the heart of the matter. The same dynamic has carried the Bush II Administration – and the cult of personality has become much more virulent with the herd mobilization of the fundagelicals.
This Kirk cartoon sums up the reaganjoy of the right wing as they attempt to re-write the history of the reagan years: “Remembering Reagan”
http://dickmacalive.blogspot.com/2004/07/remembering-reagan-by-kirk.html
Reagan was the last Communist true believer. He kept the USSR going at least three years, and possibly five years, after its death. Gorbachev stuck the knife in and twisted.
Arafat won the prize because he and Begin actually sat down and negotiated. Unfortunately, Arafat and Begin were soon sidelined by more radical elements. Arafat died irrelevant.
@Oliver #23
Indeed… in fact, EMBL and CERN are just two of the seven members of EIROforum, the group of the largest European Intergovernmental Research Organisations.
The full list is:
CERN – European Organization for Nuclear Research
EFDA – European Fusion Development Agreement
EMBL – European Molecular Biology Laboratory
ESA – European Space Agency
ESO – European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere
ESRF – European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
ILL – Institut Laue Langevin
These are intergovernmental research organisations, so they are indeed European in nature rather than just national.
..And no country or countries in the world gets near the sizes of experiments conducted in CERN.
And even another note USA is nowhere near some of the most scientifically productive countries compared to population sizes in citings and publications.
The US has lead the world in scientific research for two reasons:
1) We had so much money that devoting even a miniscule fraction of the wealth into research was more than most countries could.
2) We had excellent universities and research institutions that pulled the best and brightest from terribly poor countries without opportunity, and we kept them here by offering them lifestyles they could never achieve in their homelands.
So basically, it all comes down to us being wealthy – which is a condition that I expect to be ending very soon.
I get the impression that there are sort of two categories of scientific Nobels. (I haven’t looked at the peace or literature ones as much.) One is for a monumental discovery, and a second is to commemorate a life of high achievement. Einstein could have won for either, but won for the second – and may well have started that trend.