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The Almighty Buck Science

New Awards To Compete With Nobel Prizes 204

Posted by Zonk from the new-kids-on-the-block dept.
Tsalg writes "The Nobel prizes will soon have company. Fred Kavli, a Norwegian physicist, is funding new awards in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience and nanotechnology. Kavli already funds several think tanks both in the U.S. and abroad, and intends the awards to help 'spread the word of science and get more students interested', as 'in many parts of the world that's a problem, from Norway to the United States...'"
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New Awards To Compete With Nobel Prizes More

New Awards To Compete With Nobel Prizes

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  • The problem (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 )
    The problem isn't student's lack of interest, it's the lack of support from the government at the highest levels trickling down. Were I going to choose a major today, I would steer clear of anything having to do with programming, for fear of being sued for writing "hello world", given all the fun fun stuff our government ( US ) is doing in the patent/dmca area.

    If our governments, US in particular, were to make science a priority ( real science. Not Bush science ), then we'd see interest in the student bo
    • Try smiling! When you smile, the whole world smiles with you!

      Kids want to be rich, be famous, and get laid. Scientists, by and large, lack a reputation for at least two of those.

      If it takes a prize or two to motivate a generation of young people ("Oh, wow, I can win that prize I can't pronounce and get rich, be famous, and get laid all over the place!"), that's what it takes.
      • Try smiling! When you smile, the whole world smiles with you!

        I hate this attitude. Just because I choose to see the realities of our world doesn't mean I'm not an optimist. I choose to see the realities because I want to do something to improve them.

        Kids want to be rich, be famous, and get laid. Scientists, by and large, lack a reputation for at least two of those.

        Hate to break it to ya, sparky, but kids want what adults want: To feel important. Be that getting good grades, have social status, wh
        • I hate this attitude. Just because I choose to see the realities of our world doesn't mean I'm not an optimist. I choose to see the realities because I want to do something to improve them.

          No problem. Reality is Bush and the current offices will be depopulated in 2-6 years due to that wonderful bit of democracy called elections. Bush can't run for office again, so just hope the Democrats can find a better candidate this round to beat whomever the Republicans nab to toss up for election. Hillary Clinton
        • >I hate this attitude...

          I really don't care for it myself. It was a joke. I meant to fill out the joke with a little humor, but I forgot :-).

          All administrations see science as a political tool. This one just uses it in a way you don't seem to like. Think Kennedy wanted to go the moon to answer the burning question of what the rocks were made from there? No, it was to make political hay in the Cold War.

          I don't care, frown if you must. It's a futile, meaningless life, and in the end we return to d
      • Kinsey was a scientist...sort of. He didn't win any prizes. Most people would not care for the kind of fame he had...but he had plenty of it. And as for getting laid...thats what his science studied.

    • Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:34PM (#12422883) Homepage Journal
      The problem isn't student's lack of interest, it's the lack of support from the government at the highest levels ...

      I'd argue that lack of preparation at the lowest levels has a lot to do with it, followed by lack of appreciation on the job.

      The K-12 education system is a mess. Unfortunately, it isn't broken: it's working roughly as designed. It keeps the kids warehoused and off the labor market until age 18, which keeps unemployment rate down and the labor unions happy. It keeps the teachers' union strong. It provides free babysitting, which keeps the parents happy. It even provides a smattering of education to the children of the middle class, though that's only because of a few dedicated teachers who are doing their best to subvert the system.

      It isn't a matter of money: every country which outscores us on standardized tests spends less money per student than we do. In 1998, the average per student expenditure for U.S. elementary and high schools was roughly the same as the per student expenditure at Harvard (NOT the tuition, but Harvard's expenditure).

      The experience of recent immigrants suggests that cultural expectations are a big part of the problem: immigrants from the Caribbean usually do significantly better in school than American blacks in the same schools. Immigrants from China and Russia usually excel in the same schools in which American students avoid education. American schools foster an anti-intellectual culture which rewards ``students'' with popularity for almost anything but academic success.

      Homeschoolers are educating their children to far higher standards than any public school, and at far less cost. While American public schools are spending over $7,000 per student, most homeshcoolers are spending less than $1,000 per student. That means they are spending roughly 1/10 the money, to get far better results. One big reason they are able to do this is is that they are able to socialize their children, in contrast to the public, warehouse schools, which anti-socialize them. Homeschooled children spend every day in society, seeing how adults value and reward work and learning. It's no wonder that they learn a very different lesson than the children in the warehouse schools.

      Why are young Americans choosing any field but engineering and science? A big part of it is that the public schools don't prepare them adequately for anything, but especially not for the sciences. After teaching calculus to American engineering students at a competitive state university, I can say that even American engineering students are abysmally ill-prepared in math.

      Then there's the problem of the reward on the job: why would any sensible person want to go into a field which requires long hours of hard study in school, followed by longer hours of harder work on the job, and rewards it with relatively low pay? Anyone who could make a good living as an engineer could make a much better living in something like financial engineering, accounting or actuary science, and the hours would be no worse.

      Third, engineering is an ``up or out'' profession: after 5 to 10 years, most engineers are unemployable, since fresh graduates are available to do the same work (so their management thinks) for less money. Engineers who don't move into management eventually get laid off, and wind up flipping burgers. Why not coast through business school and go directly into management? You wind up in the same position, with less work and higher lifetime earnings.

      If you become an engineer, you will work for managers who really believe that an engineer fresh out of school is better than an experienced engineer, because he's cheaper. Your management will sooner or later follow that to the logical conclusion that the engineer in China is ten times better than you, because he's ten times cheaper.

      I got an engineering degree twenty years ago, but I never worked as an engineer, and today I'm an economist. What I've written abo

      • The K-12 education system is a mess. Unfortunately, it isn't broken: it's working roughly as designed. It keeps the kids warehoused and off the labor market until age 18, which keeps unemployment rate down and the labor unions happy. It keeps the teachers' union strong. It provides free babysitting, which keeps the parents happy. It even provides a smattering of education to the children of the middle class, though that's only because of a few dedicated teachers who are doing their best to subvert the syste

      • Re:The problem (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Vraylle ( 610820 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:53PM (#12423223) Homepage
        As a former public school teacher, I have to ask you about your $/pupil analaysis...how many of those nations spending less money per student yet scoring higher on the tests are actually including ALL children, and not just the ones that have tested well for entrance, have no disabilities, etc.? My experience was that 75%-85% of educational resources are spent on "special needs" students. A big part of this is the notion that they should be included with "normal" children in "normal" classrooms. I'm not aware of any other countries that supposedly outperform us that do the same.

        • Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)

          by RealAlaskan ( 576404 )
          I don't know the answer to that.

          I do know that Germany ``tracks'' students early. By about what would be middle school age here, the German kids' lives have been decided: either they are college material, or they're going into a trade. I think that most countries are closer to that system than to ours. Taiwan, for example, has high school entrance examinations, followed by college entrance exams. Both levels are highly competitive for the good schools.

          I suspect that the U.S. practice of putting th

          • Re:The problem (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            I'll agree with you that the use of our educational dollars is questionable at times, but that's precisely what's great about a representative system like ours. </short rant>

            Ranting aside, parents of special needs have whined to their legislators and the courts, and it's steamrolled up from there. I'd love to see the educational system "rescued", but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

            As for home-schooling, if you've been successful with it, my hat's off to you. When teaching, I encountered sev
            • Parents of special needs are a special interest and in democratic societies special interests will always get what they want as long as they remain small relative to the rest of the population. The special interests get their way precisely because they are small. For example, the American sugar farmers get massive subsidies from the federal government every year because they would not be able to survive on the world sugar prices without them. Those subsidies are a voting issue for those sugar farmers. If yo
          • Furthermore, homeschoolers again are showing the way: learning disabled children who are homeschooled often wind up ahead of the U.S. median, and always at lower cost than the ineffective public child-warehouses

            Homeschoolers have involved parents who encourage their children. Many parents who send their children to public schools don't provide the same level of involvement. Probably the biggest difference in education between the US and other countries is the parents and cultural emphasis on educatin.

      • Re:The problem (Score:4, Insightful)

        by szquirrel ( 140575 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:17PM (#12423620) Homepage
        Homeschooled children spend every day in society, seeing how adults value and reward work and learning. It's no wonder that they learn a very different lesson than the children in the warehouse schools.

        By definition, homeschooled children are taught at home by themselves or in small groups by a single parent or a handful of like-minded parents. Unless they spend their spare time working in a mall they aren't interacting with anywhere near the hundreds of other kids most public schoolers see on a daily basis.

        As much as I'd like to believe that most homeschooled children are taught to be open-minded world travellers, the reverse is far more likely to be true. Most homeschooled children I've met are taught by parents who want to isolate them from what the parents see as harmful influences in public schools. That's not to say they're all xenophobic extremist zealots, but the majority are.

        Sorry, please do go on about how bad public schools are.

        • Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:42PM (#12423995) Homepage Journal
          Unless they spend their spare time working in a mall they aren't interacting with anywhere near the hundreds of other kids most public schoolers see on a daily basis.

          I can only think of two places where you are likely to be age tracked, and spend all your time with large groups of people your own age: the military, and prison. The age tracking isn't deliberate in those institutions, but there are some other parallels.

          Socialization is what happens in society. Adults spend most of their time either at a job, working individually or in small groups, then they go home to their families. School takes kids out of society, into an artificial environment which has more in common with a prison than the real world. School prevents socialization. Remember that the Columbine killers were ``socialized'' in one of the public, warehouse schools.

          The Moores [geocities.com] (see ``When Education Becomes Abuse: A Different Look at the Mental Health of Children'') did some research [geocities.com] (see ``School Can Wait") in the 1970s which showed that putting children into a school environment before about age 12 caused no end of pathologies. They became peer-dependent, they became alienated from their parents, they learned to hate anyone who wasn't a member of their group, and on and on.

          Most homeschooled children I've met are taught by parents who want to isolate them from what the parents see as harmful influences in public schools.

          What sort of irresponsible parent wouldn't? The Moores' work shows that simply sending your kids to a ``good'' school can do them harm. The fact that there are metal detectors at the door and armed guards in the halls and a lot of violence in spite of all that shouldn't worry me, I suppose? Should I get my kids a bunch of snuff movies and kiddie porn so they don't grow up ``sheltered''? Have you done that for your kids?

          That's not to say they're [homeschooling parents] all xenophobic extremist zealots, but the majority are.

          I'm afraid that I've never met an extremist zealot who homeschooled, and I've met hundreds of homeschooling families over the years. Unless you simply mean ``parents who want to shelter their kids until they're mature enough to take care of themselves''. If that's what you mean, I'm proud to be a xenophobic extremist zealot.

          • Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)

            by NeoSkandranon ( 515696 )
            I'm afraid that I've never met an extremist zealot who homeschooled...

            Perhaps extremist zealot isn't accurate here (No doubt that depends on who you ask.) but I might guess that some percentage go in for it as much for control as other benefits. I'm glad to hear that your experience differs, as I find it depressing that parents homeschool sheerly for the control-factor, but here's what I've encountered.

            At the last church I attended homeschooling had a strong following, and the parents motivations for it
        • I haven't met a large sample, but the one homeschooled child I know has parents who are entertainers (musician dad, storyteller mom) who travel quite a bit and meet lots of people.

          I think the type of home schooled child you meet depends strongly on where you live and who you socialize with. There are a lot of home schooled kids whose parents want to isolate them, but of those who have other motivations there's a lot of desire to get them out into the world.

    • I disagree. It has nothing to do with government support. The goverment pumps tons of money into the sciences by way of defense contracts. We spend a LOT of money on research and development.

      The reason nobody's picking these majors and making a career out of it is that despite all the government spending, the jobs don't pay enough to make it worthwhile. I mean, if it takes 6-8 years to get your PhD in one of the hard sciences only to come out and make 60k a year, why not get a BBA and start at 50? I
    • Actually, I think, speaking as a Computational Physics student, the problem of lack of interest does exist, and lies a lot earlier than when it comes to choosing a subject to study at university.

      At least in Europe, there doesn't seem to be enough mathematical education in primary school and early secondary school to allow later science courses at school to even spark interest. For most of the people on my course that I've talked to, university physics is nothing like the physics they did at school, primari

    • then we'd see interest in the student body.

      Oh, I don't know about that. I always had LOTS of interest in the student body when I was in school....

    • The problem... Salary (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xplenumx ( 703804 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:45PM (#12424026)
      Despite popular belief, the problem of not being able to entice students to science is neither student interest nor government funding - it's salary.

      After graduating with a bachleors in biochemistry, I worked for two years at a research institution as a technician making ~$20,000 per year. I then attended graduate school and made ~$18,000 per year. After five years I worked as a post-doc at an academic instituation and made ~$25,000 per year (The NIH recently increased the post-doc salary to $36,000 for a first year post-doc up to $46,000 for a fifth year post-doc). Now, as an assistant professor (which lasts for about 5 years at which point you're reviewed for tenure), I make ~$80,000 per year.

      Contrast this with my wife and friends. Two years after graduating from college with an economics degree, my wife made over $80,000 per year. Each of my five friends with business degrees were making over $100,000 per year within four years after graduation. Of my biochemistry peers, those that chose a career outside of research (medicine excluded) did significantly better than those who either worked in science or continued on for their advanced degree. Of my peers with who I obtained a doctorate degree, those who joined industry are doing slightly better (on average ~$100,000 for those without post-docs, ~$120,000 who did) than those who stayed in academic, while those that left science are either doing much better (consulting and writing), or much worse (school teacher).

      So, not only do those who presue science achieve a far, far less salary than those who do not, but they're also deeply hurt by all of the income they didn't make during their training. Why do scientists have such big egos? Because we have nothing else.

      So, tell me - why should students join science? I'm a scientist, I love science, and I absolutely love my research - but I'd be lying if I said that I don't get frustrated by making far less than my friends while working much, much longer hours. It's not an issue money - it's an issue of compensation. We have advanced degree, we expand the economy, we save lives, and we work incredibly hard - please compensate us appropriately.

      • Are these salaries real??? Now I'm really wondering why I ever chose engineering ($100k is a fantasy salary here).

  • about time (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brontus3927 ( 865730 ) <{edwardra3} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:03PM (#12422427) Homepage Journal
    It's about time. The Nobel Committee isn't living up to goals Alfred Nobel had for the prize. I read an article on the Nobel Prize and how to win it. Step 1 was live a long time, because it takes so long for your research to be recognized by the committee. IIRC, the average time between doing something Nobel worthy and being nominated for it is ~20 years.

    • For a reason (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:06PM (#12422476)
      It's about time. The Nobel Committee isn't living up to goals Alfred Nobel had for the prize. I read an article on the Nobel Prize and how to win it. Step 1 was live a long time, because it takes so long for your research to be recognized by the committee. IIRC, the average time between doing something Nobel worthy and being nominated for it is ~20 years.

      Often it can take that long to truly estimate the impact of the sort of truly revolutionary discoveries that would warrant a prize. Also, because it's not awarded posthumously, it sometimes seems a race to award the prize to older scientists before they die.

      But the first reason I mentioned seems the more important one. It's hard to have perspective when the research is first done, and you want to make sure it stands up and has a truly significant impact. You don't want to give it to flashy but less sound science that was the "flavor of the month."

      • because [the Nobels are] not awarded posthumously, it sometimes seems a race to award the prize to older scientists before they die.

        Doesn't the same logic that says awarding the prize to a dead scientist does the world little good suggest that awarding the prize to a nearly dead scientist does the world little good?
        • Doesn't the same logic that says awarding the prize to a dead scientist does the world little good suggest that awarding the prize to a nearly dead scientist does the world little good?

          Eh? No. It's hard to have a ceremony for a corpse. And the prize is more a celebration than some sort of tool to save the world. Presumably you already did that, which is why you *have* the prize.

          • The prize (as originally intended) is supposed to provide funding for dreamers to begin their exciting new research.
          • It's hard to have a ceremony for a corpse.

            Um, no it isn't. I'd say there were thousands of ceremonies for corpses just in the United States today. Funerals.

            There doesn't seem to me to be any rational reason to disqualify a person from recognition just because they are no longer living.

            • Um, no it isn't. I'd say there were thousands of ceremonies for corpses just in the United States today. Funerals.

              OK. It would be hard for a corpse to give a speech. Which is much of the point of the ceremony.

      • Re:For a reason (Score:3, Insightful)

        by brontus3927 ( 865730 )
        While I understand that reasoning, from TFA: "founder Alfred Nobel once said he wanted to encourage "dreamers" who lacked funding."

        At the heart of the issue, there are two (partially) conflicting goals at work. One is to promote sound science, and the other is to generate enthusiasm in order to create a new generation of scientists. There reason they conflict is because most science isn't considered very "exciting" I'd like to see a prize set up more like the Grammy's. The most groundbreaking, innovat

        • While I understand that reasoning, from TFA: "founder Alfred Nobel once said he wanted to encourage "dreamers" who lacked funding."

          Yeah, that ain't it anymore. ;)

          There reason they conflict is because most science isn't considered very "exciting" I'd like to see a prize set up more like the Grammy's. The most groundbreaking, innovative, or outright interesting research in a certain field in the last year. Plenty of glitz, some celebrities (Will Smith, George Lucas, and Steven Speilberg have made fortune

        • While I understand that reasoning, from TFA: "founder Alfred Nobel once said he wanted to encourage "dreamers" who lacked funding."

          That might be what TFA says. But it's not at all what Nobel's final will and testament says:

          "The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, s

    • Re:about time (Score:3, Interesting)

      by k98sven ( 324383 )
      The Nobel Committee isn't living up to goals Alfred Nobel had for the prize. [..] IIRC, the average time between doing something Nobel worthy and being nominated for it is ~20 years.

      And how does that indicate that the Nobel committee isn't doing their job? It often takes 20 years to evaluate the importance of a discovery. Could you point out some prize-winners you don't feel are worthy? There is seldom any controversy over the winners. Which means that the Committee is indeed doing a good job.

      Also, it's

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) *
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • "the average time between doing something Nobel worthy and being nominated for it is ~20 years"

      No no no. Arafat got Nobel price faster.

      (you can get nominated if you stop doing something, too)

  • Flavour of the month? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:03PM (#12422435) Homepage Journal
    I appreciate attempts to increase the popularity of science - but I wonder if the choice of categories is rather shortsighted. Are these the areas that are important long-term, or simply the trendiest parts of science at the moment? I wonder if some more traditional areas would benefit more from a new award - it's quite easy to get people excited about nanotech, less so for some other areas.
    • astrophysics, neuroscience and nanotechnology... the three areas prizes will be awarded. Astrophysics and neuroscience has been "trendy" for decades. Perhaps these are the areas that Klavi himself is the most interested. One can certainly see where the development and maturation of nanotechnology could help a business that makes sensors, which is how he made his fortune that he is now putting towards this prize
    • Want a new Nobel Prize? How about one for friggen' math? As a mathy, the best you can get is a Fields' Medal - and if you haven't heard of it, don't worry - nobody else has either. The closest Nobel is for economics, which imho is about the same as awarding one for alchemy.

  • ob Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)

    by Valiss ( 463641 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:03PM (#12422438) Homepage
    "What has science ever done? Has science ever kissed a girl, won a football game, or gone to the moon?" Homer J. Simpson
    • Hey hey hey! Focus on the real issue here - what'll happen to the Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Excellence?

  • He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shisha ( 145964 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:04PM (#12422443) Homepage
    In mathematics we have Fields medals and Abel prices, which in importance, are comparable to Nobel prices and yet very few people (in general public) are aware that they even exist.
    • To preempt the urban legend about the reason why the lack of a mathematicss nobel prize, see The Prize's Rite [snopes.com]

    • Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Boing ( 111813 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:45PM (#12423086)
      I think the real reason the public doesn't know about Fields or Abel is because it would be extraordinarily difficult to explain the achievements being awarded.

      For example, take this Wikipedia exerpt from the entry on 1974 Fields winner Enrico Bombieri [wikipedia.org]...

      Bombieri's theorem is one of the major applications of the large sieve method. It improves Dirichlet's theorem on prime numbers in arithmetic progressions, by showing that by averaging over the modulus over a range, the mean error is much less than can be proved in a given case. This result can sometimes substitute for the still-unproved generalized Riemann hypothesis.

      Did you get all that? No? Part of the problem is that 99.9% of people would have no clue what any of that meant, but mostly it's that there's no apparent or easily explainable relevance to things people care about.

      Contrast the discovery of X-rays, or the obvious world effects of Peace Prize winners, or the Chemistry awards that let us understand and control the real world better, or the Physiology awards that help us know how the human body works. Obviously, most of the awards suffer a similar problem of being too technical for most people to understand, but you can still get their attention by explaining the practical consequences in a simple way.

      • Not that physics is always that understandible: A few weeks ago at a day organized by our national physics society I heard a talk by Frank Wilczek [nobelprize.org], who won this years prize. He was introduced by 't Hoofd [nobelprize.org], who won it a few years ago, as being an excelent speaker. I think only a small part of the audience (all physicists) had a clue about what he was talking about, most of my colleagues had to resist falling asleep. I saw a talk by the other guy a year earlier and that was not much better.

        Mightbe it is becau
        • Heh, people may not be able to understand "a Bose-Einstein condensate, a high Tc superconductor or some bloody neutrino", but maybe the real secret of the Nobel Prize in Physics is that physical phenomena have such cool names. :)
        • Mightbe it is because both men did something in high energy/small partical physics, but I think there are not much nobel prizes that could get the kids to study science. Mightbe x-rays or a MRI scanner, but how do you explain the joy of a Bose-Einstein condensate, a high Tc superconductor or some bloody neutrino?

          Simple: you show the kids a Stargate episode where the team saves the Earth by using a Bose-Einstein condensate to destroy the Ga'ould mothership.
    • One problem with the Fields medal is that it is only awarded every 4 years. Unlike the Nobel and Turing awards which are given yearly.

  • is it the money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brajesh ( 847246 ) <(brajesh.sachan) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:06PM (#12422469) Homepage
    it's not the money that makes nobel prize so special. $1 million or whatever cannot augment over the 100 year legacy of the coveted prize.

  • That's nice... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:07PM (#12422491) Journal
    ...but it's not as if he's only the second person to think of giving prizes to scientists. There are plenty more prizes out there than just the Nobels.

  • Eh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ShaniaTwain ( 197446 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:07PM (#12422496) Homepage
    would that be the IgNobel Prize? [improb.com]

  • A modest suggestion. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sandbox Conspiracy ( 836255 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:08PM (#12422499)
    As a geek at least partially inspired by Scotty from Star Trek, I wouldn't mind seeing a James Doohan Award for excellence in contributing to technological advancement or similar.
  • The Nobel Prize has been reduced to an advertising tactic for research institutions. Of course the more Nobel Prizes an institution has will propagate a higher caliber of researchers etc. It is nowhere near the idea that Mr. Nobel has a long time ago.
    • Since when weren't prizes, any and all of them, used for prestige and marketing?

      What do you mean "It is nowhere near the idea Mr Nobel had"? Did he have a section in his will that said "Those who recive my prize may not be proud of it?".

      Or are you implying that the Nobel committee is corrupt? There certainly is very little evidence of that. The prizes which have been rewarded have largely been regarded as deserved. That is the whole reason the prize means anything and has any marketing value.

  • It's a ploy (Score:3, Funny)

    by mathmatt ( 851301 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:10PM (#12422528) Homepage
    Kalvi is just trying to win a Nobel Prize for achievement in the science of making awards.

    (I have a feeling he'll have to settle for a Kalvi Prize)

  • but why is science so unpopular? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:13PM (#12422558)
    It doesn't matter what I write, since I'm bitchslapped down to -1 and nobody will read it. But I have a Slashdot account, so I'll post.
    The crucial question that I see is: why are students NOT attracted to the sciences more? I look around and see moral and scientific relativism, where something is right if you need it enough, or want it to be true. If this is the world children find themselves in, why WOULD they study a field which claims that the world is deterministic (down to the resolution of our ability to measure), that things ARE true or false, good or bad?
    • I think I have a good answer for you, Molly, and no, it's not the money. It's the courts and our intolerant society. Just look at what is going on in Kansas and Georgia and Texas. We have *got* to do something about the Conservative Christian (right or left, I don't give a fsck about your political orientation... it takes all kinds to stick your head in the sand) constantly trying to subvert what Science has PROVED to be fact.

      Now, that being said.. One can say that Darwinian Theory is still a theory.

  • Kavli Award? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jhan ( 542783 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:13PM (#12422567) Homepage

    So, two important science awards, both hosted by nordic countries?

    Nobel at least sound somewhat like "noble". Makes you forget about him making all that money by producing explosives.

    Kavli [kavli.se] sounds like some sort of low quality bread-spread...

    Makes my think this is kind-of a cheesy award. :-)

  • I'll pass (Score:3, Funny)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:15PM (#12422586) Homepage
    Fred Kavli, a Norwegian physicist, is funding new awards... ...And all he needs is an American bank account in which to store the approx $1.2bln until the awards are given out.

  • Why nanotechnology? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geneing ( 756949 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:17PM (#12422600)
    I wonder why Kavli chose nanotech as an award field. It is hot these days, but will it be important in a decade or two.

    When Nobel picked physics, chemistry, physiology&medicine, literature and peace he got it mostly right. These are fundamental areas which will be important for a long time. Although, chemistry prize is often given these days to work related to biology and I can't remember many fundametal discoveries were made lately.

    • Although, chemistry prize is often given these days to work related to biology and I can't remember many fundametal discoveries were made lately.

      That has less to do with the prize and more to do with what's going on in chemistry nowadays. It's simply that more things are going on in biochemistry than in the more 'conventional' fields of chemistry.

      Biochemistry is to chemistry now a bit like quantum physics was to physics in the 30's. A vast new field to be explored, with lots of new ground to break.

      No, f
      • Few chemists believe there is anything in chemistry which cannot be explained by quantum mechanics
        Which reminds me of an old joke: "Physics is just mathematics applied to natural world. Chemistry is just physics applied to chemical elements. Biology is just chemistry applied to complex organic molecules. Conclusion: kids, study math."
    • I wonder why Kavli chose nanotech as an award field. It is hot these days, but will it be important in a decade or two.

      Ask that question in a decade or two, when all the "safe experiments" have gotten out of control and either unleashed hell on earth or turned the planet into gray goo. We'll be glad to have award-winning nanotechnologists then, I'll wager.

  • Awards don't attract students to science... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:17PM (#12422610)
    Big name prizes don't really attract people to science. College scholarships and demonstrations of practical applications of science will atract new students. For example, it's all well and good if Dr. Hoffenheimer wins the Nobel Prize in physics for his work in anti-positron flux through a silicone wafer, but other than physics grad students and Ph.Ds, nobody else is going to understand it, and lack of understanding leads to lack of caring. I think shows like Beakman's World and Bill Nye have done more to attract kids to science by makeing it seem approchable, rather than science being some thing that old guys did in white coats in sterile labratories.
  • Prizes like the Nobel, McArthur and this are fundamentally bad prizes. They are subjective hence politicized.

    The correct way to spend such money is demonstrated by the Ansari X-Prize [xprize.org], the Bowery [geocities.com]/CATS [space-frontier.org] prize and the fusion prize legislation submitted by Robert W. Bussard to Congress [geocities.com]. All of these set forth operational technical criteria for the award before it is known who will win the prize. It make it far harder for politicians posing as scientists and technologists to steal the credit and money due ot

    • I would also add to this the Methuselah Mouse Prize [methuselahmouse.org]-which is a prize for making a mouse live the longest. What is especially interesting about the MM prize is that it is a continuous prize that will constantly have a higher bar-and will never expire.
    • The prizes you mention are useful, but the Nobel prizes are meant to encourage research in a more general way.

      Try this thought experiment: come up ith a prize like the ones you mentionned (X-Prize, etc.) that will styill be relevant in 100 years. Any idea where science will be in a hundred years? Me neither. But the Nobel prize has been around for over a hundred years rewarding people who have made advances that the founders couldn't even imagine.
      • The thing is:
        stuff like the Methuselah mouse prize goes beyond politics. The Nobel has a problem in that
        1) folks tend to get Nobel prizes when they are old
        (so it doesn't facilitate their work)
        2) a lot of the awards are very subjective
        3) There is political aspect here-I can believe
        folks don't get a nobel just because they
        aren't well liked by their peers.

        The Methuselah Mouse prize doesn't have that kind of problem.

  • Woo hoo! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mbrother ( 739193 ) * <mbrother.uwyo@edu> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:45PM (#12423080) Homepage
    Astrophyics rarely if ever wins the Nobel prize (X-ray and Neutrino astronomy did win a couple of years ago, but before that there are just a few instances involving astronomical tests of relativity). There's a lot of good work going on that would be better publicized and understood by the public with a regular high-profile prize.
    • Which instances did you have in mind? Are you including Chandrasekhar [nobelprize.org], or Martin Ryle [nobelprize.org]?
      • Those are good examples, which slipped my mind (although some of Chandrasekhar's key work was in applying relativistic constraints to stellar structure). I was thinking of binary pulsars (Taylor and Hulse) in 1993, as a testing ground for gravitational waves.
  • sure scientists care, sure

    so how many forgo comfortable lifestyles in order to fund research?

    to most scientists, it's just a job that provides good pay, nobody really cares about science
  • There's the Lemmelson prize for inventors, the Fields medal for mathematics, the Japan prize for computer science. All these are near the mega-buck range and given out at most a couple people around the world a year.

    These just dont have the media prestige of the Nobels. The media and prize mutually bolster each other. Also there is a ctitical mass of a couple hundred living recipients. The number is large enough to have influence, but not so large to be diluted.
  • While I don't have any problems with additional groups handing out all the awards they like, I completely fail to see why this would be a competition with the Nobel prizes.

    I realize we've all become accustomed to the 'me too'-ness of award shows that take place every spring, which I gi=uess kinda 'compete' with the Academy Awards.

    But is another group giving more prizes really competing?
  • Sciences are not the American Idol. There has been a million dollar reward [claymath.org] for ages now, to crack the P-NP problem, among others. You see hordes of math & CS grads working on it ? Nah. There's no easy attack.

    Professor Richard Hamming [chris-lott.org] was fond of saying that you can get money beyond your dreams if you solve any one of the 3 hardest problems in physics - timetravel, antigravity, or teleportation. Do you see Physics majors attacking these problems tooth & nail ? As Hammings explains, there's just no known attack.

    Americans aren't warming up to the sciences simply because they have a choice. Students get to decide what they want to study. They look at the difficulty levels of the subject, the job market, ask their peers & parents, look at career prospects & evaluate their "sexiness", and decide to major in English & Communication & Marketing instead. In India, where I come from, you simply didn't have a choice, (well, not until you were 18 anyway, by which time it was too late for most of us). You were asked to digest megadoses of math & science in high school. Hell, I remember working on some "preliminary math" problems when I did my Masters in CompSci in the US. The problems were ones I had previously encountered when I was in my early teens, in my high school! But the Professor said American undergrads needed that sort of thing!!

    You guys have a choice, so you study literature & photography & journalism & whatnot in your high school. In India, the only choices are math, more math & much more math. So I can comfortably handle a second order differential equation. But to this day I have not studied Shakespear ( spelling ? ), Rosseu, Homer ( not simpson, the pgilosopher chap), Keats, Byron or any other literary figures. I just know the names cause we crammed them for various "general knowledge" quizzes!

    Education systems are broken all over the world. In places like India & China, we get a one-sided hard-core math-sci curricula with no literature. In the US/UK, you guys get liberal arts with less math/science than what Bill Gates wants [zdnet.com] to hire.

    Prizes are not the answer (Nor is a $100 laptpop for developing nations). I don't know what is.

  • We swedes will always just pat them on the head in differently patronizing ways. But we'll see who comes crawling back to the good old kingdom when their oil runs out.
  • I'm told I'm studying Comp. Sci, but I think I've been lied to and that what I'm really studying is mathematics. I think math could be very useful to me, if I just had proper understanding of it. The other students I've talked to have apparently not thought much about this, and have skipped the entire 'understanding' part in favor of memorizing every example problem and past answers to tests they can get their hands on. I concider this practice fatalist, counter-productive, and in some sense cheating. They
    • Fantastic post there. Thanks for that. I have never been a maths wiz but I started a part-time science degree a couple of years ago. I tentatively put in two intro-level Maths courses in my second year plan as I was not confident of passing, given my previous experiences. During the first year, I was horrified at the general aversion to Maths among the science and arts students I came across. A sad state of affairs. I did a bridging course over summer and ended up enrolling in the honours stream Maths. It w
    • Thanks to Russell, you do not need to even understand what the formulas mean or anything of the kind, as long as your mathematical syntax is flawless. This for some reason gives free regin to teachers to hammer the syntax into students without them, us, ever knowing what it means.
      We become, quite literally, educated fools

      Thanks to modern mathematics, it is mathematically proven that mathematics is NOT just syntax and logic.

      There are many deep and fundamental concepts in mathematics. Syntax is the necess

  • scientific prizes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Antonymous Flower ( 848759 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:32PM (#12426705) Homepage
    Rewarding scientists isn't a bad thing. However, the prize isn't a million bucks and a golden locket. The prize is discovery. To make progress towards a higher level of understanding is invaluable. When one man comes closer to understanding himself through scientific discovery, the global community prospers. The significance of the nobel prize isn't the golden locket, but rather a point in the direction of understanding. A recognition of truth.

    Most kids don't ask the questions that lead to discovery. You could blame that on the schools, but realize that public schools simply aren't for that type of thing. Public schools are for the sake of economic growth. When the economy grows more opportunities for scientific advancements are possible (believe it or not.)

    Science isn't popular among youth because there are so many pleasures abound, and few opportunities to ask "what is going on here?" All they hear concerning academics is "do your homework." It's just something that "has to be done." Mathematics, easily the most astounding acheivement of human intellect, is taught merely algorithmically. Students are taught only to learn procedure, rather than to discover.

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