Nobel Prize For Medicine Awarded, Physics Soon To Follow 135
Nobel Prize season is here again, and the first award for Physiology or Medicine was split between two virologists who discovered HIV and one who demonstrated that a virus causes cervical cancer. Coming soon is the announcement for Physics. Look to the right for a chance to pit your selection wit against the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with a poll for which scientific achievement deserves the prize. Front runners, according to Reuters, are; Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, discovers of graphene, Vera Rubin, provider of the best evidence yet of dark matter, and Roger Penrose and Dan Shechtman, discoverers of Penrose tilings and quasicrystals.
Re:Anything but (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobel prices in the sciences are usually very conservative. I don't think we will not see a Nobel price for dark matter until the responsible particle(s) has been discovered.
Re:I'd vote for Penrose (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to have to disagree. I know this sounds trollish, but I'm really not trying to start a flamewar, and I ask that you keep it civil in telling me how wrong I am. Here goes:
Whatever the greatness of Penrose's discovery, he threw it all away when he started advocating the quantum gravity theory of uncomputable physics as the basis for creativity. Right or wrong, he's advocating a theory which a) does not have enough evidence to come anywhere close to favoring it over more deserving theories, and b) was chosen so that it would be lots of work to falsify.
Scientists should hold themselves to a higher standard than the "principle of Epicurus", i.e. accept all hypotheses not yet falsified. They shoud believe whatever the evidence reveals to have the *highest* probability, not just pick their personal favorite theory that hasn't specifically been ruled out yet. To paraphrase Eliezer Yudkowsky, the fact that the map is blurry does not give you the right fill in streets wherever you feel like.
Is it going too far to count his unscientific theory against his previous successes? No. Scientific committees need to consider not just the immediate, but also the long-term consequences of giving their endorsement to individuals. While they should give out degrees to people who like to hold unscientific beliefs in their spare time, they should not hold them out as shining examples of "someone doing it right".
Re:Other Fields of Endeavour (Score:2, Interesting)
Some would say that the peace prize gets undue respect from sharing it's name with the science prizes.
I thought it was because Nobel himself regarded the Peace Prize as his most important legacy.
Re:1993 HBO Movie (Score:3, Interesting)
Slight correction:
HIV is a lentivirus, one of the types of retroviruses. One of the toughest parts of making the link between HIV and AIDS was identifying this virus that could infect a person and then not cause AIDS for years. (Lenti means "slow".) These researchers, politics aside, cracked a very tough problem with tools that would be considered primitive by today's standards.
The discovery led to greater understanding of lentiviruses in general: we now know that cats (FIV), horses (EIA), cattle (BIV), and monkeys, among others all have lentiviruses of their own.
Secondary to that expansion, advances in non-human lentivirus research are providing leverage for new approaches to HIV. There is currently an effective (>80% protective) vaccine for FIV in cats. Ideally, some of those techniques can be successfully modified for an HIV vaccine.
Peace prize is flawed----- (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobel prize, at least for peace, has no credibility to almost all Indians, as Mahatma Gandhi the absolute paragon of peace and non-violence in modern history, was never awarded the prize. In all sincerity, it would have honored the prize and not the person, in this case. Indians are generally highly divided about most issues, but, on Mahatma Gandhi's commitment to peace and non-violence, there is almost unanimous agreement. Please note that, there were dissenters who thought non-violence wasnt the best way to attain freedom, but nobody doubted Mahatma's non-violent credentials.
Nobel prize, like most western institutions, has an enormous western bias and is unable to see beyond the borders of western civilization, for most parts. This is not a complaint, it is just a fact!!