Nobel Prize announcements have become our own little nerd Super Bowl, an Academy Awards for the pocket-protector crowd. They are the subject of prediction markets and office pools, debated over teatime and happy hour. We ask, what will win: quantum dots or protein folding? For one week during the year, we are all experts on what breakthroughs warrant our attention.
At best, these conversations are fun, even insightful; teachers often discard their syllabi for a day to discuss the technical advances behind the discoveries, and their wider implications. But less productive exchanges also persist, exemplified by the furor over the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, given to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, for their discoveries that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID.
Reactions to the announcement erupted moments after the prize was announced, much of it focusing on the story behind Karikó’s departure from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. This response highlights how criticisms of the Nobel Prize continue to miss the mark, and are often obscured by scapegoating, moral superiority, and public posturing. What we need instead are deeper, more uncomfortable conversations about innovation, inclusion, and merit.
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Nobel announcement disagreements often focus on whether the recipients deserved it or not. But the 2023 medicine or physiology prize has received near-universal applause: the science that it rewards has already saved the lives of many millions, and (maybe most importantly) has transformed how we think about emerging infectious diseases. But the real intrigue surrounds its backstory. Faced with a prospective demotion, Karikó was, by her own account, forced to retire from her position at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. The much-discussed reasons are familiar villains: the inability to secure major grant funding from the large agencies, and other markers of success in the biomedicine machine.
The news has spawned a necessary community reflection. Some suggest that our instruments for evaluating science are hopelessly broken in academia. Relatedly, those in biotech emphasize that the work demonstrates how private industry can deliver important discovery at a speed that academia cannot. Others highlight the role of sexism, where women in science are rarely respected when it comes to intrepid ideas. In the face of this, some suggest specific interventions: that the University of Pennsylvania should apologize, or at least not take credit for the achievement because “they” (the school or its officials) devalued her work. All these arguments are well-intentioned but are festooned with contradictions.
First, there is the notion that the Nobel Prize equals vindication. Consider the contradiction. We are frustrated that Karikó was misjudged by a room full of people at a prestigious institution, the University of Pennsylvania. And yet, we celebrate her receiving a positive judgement from a room full of people at a prestigious institution, the Nobel Committee (notably, few know how either works). This cognitive dissonance tells us to like the subjective processes that give us the outcome that we want, and to dislike the equally subjective ones that don’t. Instead, we could be equally critical of both.
This relates to the second problem: we ignore our collective complicity in a system that offers rewards based on dubious standards. For example, in identifying suitable graduate students or faculty, we have all almost surely missed out on worthy candidates based on our own (even benign) preferences. One reason that we haven’t been held accountable for our poor decisions is that the people we denied haven’t (yet) won a Nobel Prize. The reality is even worse: our decisions probably prevented deserving scientists from ever having the chance.
My personal defense mechanism for overlooking? I conclude that they (the University of Pennsylvania in this case) were wrong for misjudging Karikó but that I’ve been fair and correct in all my own judgments.
This sort of hypocrisy is not only prevalent in science but is a near requirement, to make us feel better about the harm we might have caused. The more uncomfortable truth is that academic science has never been a trade that selects for or supports the best scientific minds in the world. Instead, it has been, and will be for the foreseeable future, an enterprise for smart people positioned within the right professional network, armed with vocabulary to make their ideas legible to influential scientists (not the public), who study things that are just interesting enough to not offend academic sensibilities. And many of us suspect that identities like gender and race (and others) can amplify the signals that trip those wires.
In my view, academic institutions are fairly transparent (though not enough) about the fact that the primary duty of their scientists is not to make the world better, but to develop a professional profile and raise funds. It is the job I signed up for, and I’ve reconciled this in the same way that I do with many institutions, say the U.S., with baggage: acknowledge the flaws, while leveraging the windows of privilege to do good. Hopefully, I can meaningfully change a thing or two about it in my lifetime. Thankfully, I’ve had dozens of remarkable mentors and friends who are doing just that, better than I ever could.
But it is the changing of a “thing or two” part where the do-gooder-rubber meets the selection-committee-road. I am certain about one thing: hurling invective at the University of Pennsylvania won’t fix academia’s flaws. Change only happens with personal reflection: how many students from nontraditional backgrounds have I ever advocated for? How often do I rely on credentials and proximity to power to make professional decisions? Do I rely on silly, hackable citation metrics to evaluate scientific impact? And how often does innovation truly factor into my evaluations of a scientist?
The questions make my heart hurt, mostly because I’m just another random scientist swimming against a tide that prefers that we all become fundraising automatons. In the meantime, I can draw inspiration from the lives of Nobel laureates. They contain thrilling tales of discovery, and lessons about creativity and resilience. The winners will be okay. Rather than hunting for villains in their stories, I’m better off using their inspiration and frustration to help find the next Frances Arnold, Carolyn Bertozzi or Katalin Karikó, many struggling to find a way to participate in science.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.