Nobel disease

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nobel disease or Nobelitis is the embracing of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life.[1][2][3] It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise,[4][5][6] although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.[7] Paul Nurse, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you".[8] Nobel disease has been described as a "tongue in cheek" term.[5]

Implications[]

While it remains unclear whether Nobel winners are statistically more prone to critical thinking errors than are other scientists, the phenomenon is of interest because it provides an existence proof that being an authority in one field does not necessarily make one an authority in any other field, and, to the extent that winning a Nobel Prize serves as a proxy indicator of scientific brilliance and high general intelligence, such characteristics are not incompatible with irrationality.[9][7]

Nobel disease also serves to demonstrate that, for some prize winners, being universally hailed as right appears to bolster the individual laureate's confirmation bias more than it does their skepticism.[10]

Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate of the prize in economics in 1976, said the following of so called "Nobel disease" as it relates to his economic thinking towards an "antidote":[11]

I myself have been asked my opinion on everything from a cure for the common cold to the market value of a letter signed by John F. Kennedy. Needless to say the attention is flattering, but also corrupting [the attention from receiving a Nobel prize that is]. Somehow we badly need an antidote for both the inflated attention granted a Nobel laureate in areas outside his competence and the inflated ego each of us is in danger of acquiring. My own field suggests one obvious antidote: competition through the establishment of many more awards. But a product that has been so successful is not easy to replace. Hence, I suspect that our inflated egos are safe for a good long time to come.

Winners reported as examples[]

Linus Pauling[]

Linus Pauling won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A decade before winning the prize, he was diagnosed with Bright's disease which he treated in part by ingesting vitamin supplements, which he claimed dramatically improved his condition. He later espoused taking high doses of vitamin C to reduce the likelihood and severity of experiencing the common cold. Pauling himself consumed amounts of vitamin C on a daily basis that were more than 120 times the recommended daily intake. He further argued that megadoses of vitamin C have therapeutic value for treating schizophrenia and for prolonging cancer patients' lives. These claims are not supported by the best available science.[9][1][2]

Kary Mullis[]

Kary Mullis won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for development of the polymerase chain reaction. Mullis disagreed with the accepted, and scientifically verified, view that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, questioned the evidence for human contributions to global warming, professed a belief in astrology, and claimed that he once encountered a fluorescent raccoon that spoke with him.[4][9][12]

Luc Montagnier[]

Luc Montagnier won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 2009, in a non-peer-reviewed paper in a journal that he had founded, Montagnier claimed that solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses could emit low frequency radio waves that induce surrounding water molecules to become arranged into "nanostructures". He suggested water could retain such properties even after the original solutions were massively diluted, to the point where the original DNA had effectively vanished, and that water could retain the "memory" of substances with which it had been in contact – claims that place his work in close alignment with the pseudoscientific tenets of homeopathy. He further claimed that DNA sequence information could be 'teleported' to a separate test tube of purified water via these radio waves. He explained this in the framework of quantum field theory.[13][2][14] He has supported the scientifically discredited view that vaccines cause autism and has claimed that antibiotics are of therapeutic value in the treatment of autism.[9]

Nikolaas Tinbergen[]

Nikolaas Tinbergen won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. During his Nobel acceptance speech, Tinbergen promoted the widely discredited[15] "refrigerator mother" hypothesis of the causation of autism, thereby setting a "nearly unbeatable record for shortest time between receiving the Nobel Prize and saying something really stupid about a field in which the recipient had little experience."[2] In 1985, Tinbergen coauthored a book with his wife[16] that recommended the use of "holding therapy" for autism, a form of treatment that is empirically unsupported and that can be physically dangerous.[1][9]

Brian Josephson[]

Brian Josephson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973. Josephson has promoted a number of scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs, including the homeopathic notion that water can somehow "remember" the chemical properties of substances diluted within it, the view that transcendental meditation is helpful for bringing unconscious traumatic memories into conscious awareness, and the possibility that humans may be able to communicate with each other through the use of telepathy.[9]

James Watson[]

James Watson was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Since at least 2000, Watson has consistently and publicly claimed that blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites, and that exposure to sunlight in tropical regions and higher levels of melanin cause dark-skinned people to have a higher sex drive.[9][17][18]

Joseph Thomson[]

(Physics, 1906) Psychic, dowsing and paranormal[7]

Charles Richet[]

(Physiology or Medicine, 1913) ESP, paranormal, dowsing, ghosts[7]

William Shockley[]

(Physics, 1956) Racialism and eugenics[4][9]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Gorski, David (18 August 2008). "High dose vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?". Science Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d Gorski, David (4 June 2012). "Luc Montagnier and the Nobel Disease". Science Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  3. ^ Robson, David (2019-08-06). The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-65143-0.
  4. ^ a b c Winter, David. "The Nobel disease". Sciblogs. Science Media Center. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  5. ^ a b Berezow, Alex (18 December 2016). "Paul Krugman Now Has Nobel Disease". American Council on Science and Health. American Council on Science and Health. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  6. ^ Weigmann, Katrin (April 2018). "The genesis of a conspiracy theory: Why do people believe in scientific conspiracy theories and how do they spread?". EMBO Reports. 19 (4). doi:10.15252/embr.201845935. ISSN 1469-221X. PMC 5891410. PMID 29491005.
  7. ^ a b c d Sternberg, Robert J.; Halpern, Diane F. (2020-01-16). Critical Thinking in Psychology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-75530-6.
  8. ^ Nurse, Paul (2013-10-11). "Attention, Nobel Prize winners! Advice from someone who's already won". The Independent. Retrieved 2021-09-19.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Basterfield, Candice; Lilienfeld, Scott; Bowes, Shauna; Costello, Thomas (2020). "The Nobel disease: When intelligence fails to protect against irrationality". Skeptical Inquirer. 44 (3): 32–37.
  10. ^ Diamandis, Eleftherios P. (1 January 2013). "Nobelitis: a common disease among Nobel laureates?". Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 51 (8): 1573–1574. doi:10.1515/cclm-2013-0273. ISSN 1437-4331. PMID 23729580. S2CID 37703125.
  11. ^ Friedman, Milton; Friedman, Rose (1998). Two lucky people : memoirs (Paperback edition 1999 ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 454. ISBN 0-226-26415-7. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  12. ^ Mullis, Kary (1998). Dancing Naked in the Mind Field. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0679442554.
  13. ^ Montagnier, L; Aissa, J; Giudice, E Del; Lavallee, C; Tedeschi, A; Vitiello, G (8 July 2011). "DNA waves and water". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 306 (1): 012007. arXiv:1012.5166. Bibcode:2011JPhCS.306a2007M. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/306/1/012007. S2CID 1810576.
  14. ^ Hall, Harriett (20 October 2009). "The Montagnier "Homeopathy" Study". Science Based Medicine. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  15. ^ Folstein, S.; Rutter, M. (1977). "Genetic influences and infantile autism". Nature. 265 (5596): 726–728. Bibcode:1977Natur.265..726F. doi:10.1038/265726a0. PMID 558516. S2CID 4283843.
  16. ^ Tinbergen, N.; Tinbergen, E.A. (1985). Autistic children: New hope for a cure. London: George Allen and Unwin. ISBN 978-0041570106.
  17. ^ "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than". The Independent. 18 September 2011.
  18. ^ Harmon, Amy (1 January 2019). "James Watson Had a Chance to Salvage His Reputation on Race. He Made Things Worse". The New York Times.
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