Nobel Disease: When Geniuses Believe Weird Things
The Nobel Prize can inflate winners' confidence beyond their expertise, leading some to embrace pseudoscience or fringe ideas. This phenomenon, known as Nobel disease, is explored through examples like Linus Pauling's vitamin C megadoses, Kary Mullis's HIV denialism, and Luc Montagnier's water memory claims. Experts warn that the award's authority can corrupt judgment, as Nobel laureate Paul Nurse noted.
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 [from receiving a Nobel prize] is flattering, but also corrupting.
- embedding-shape
> an informal term for the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. 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
Sounds pretty much like every founder out there who strike gold once in the past now believing their genius now clearly applies to everything everywhere, including country governance, economics and sociology. It probably doesn't help that others around them are affected in similar ways and become more sycophantic because of the "award" these two types of people win.
- ciropantera
A lot of these aren't "strange or scientifically unsound ideas" but downright racism. Whether Nobel prize recipients are less or more racist than their contemporaries is debatable but I'm not sure they fit the same category as "believed in ghosts" or "claims to have talked to a fluorescent racoon".
- epgui
*ahem* roger penrose and his microtubules *ahem*
- i-blis
I am convinced that a similar proportion of non-prize winner scientists across all fields of natural sciences share "scientifically unsound ideas" or "scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs", or however else we want to call them. I am not even confident that age may be a decisive factor.
As an (almost retired) anthropologist with background in genetics, I do certainly nurture yet unverified and pretty unorthodox convictions, if only as a matter of hypothesis. Looking around me among colleagues who have a wealth of experience, cultivating strange ideas seems to be very common and indeed part of the discovery process.
How can one find new insight without erring ?
- ledauphin
I'm surprised the article doesn't address the Occam's Razor probability that... _most people_ hold ideas that the (a?) majority does not... and that increased media attention is likely to "discover" these beliefs.
Or rather, I see no attempt to make an argument that Nobel laureates are statistically _more_ likely than other "well-known" non-politicians to hold non-majoritarian ideas... nor any attempt to argue that the ideas followed rather than preceded the award.
- paxys
This has always felt like such a weird quirk in human behavior.
Imagine a 5 year old who is good at basketball. His parents notice it and enroll him in a class. Coaches recognize his talent and dedicate special time to him. He trains every morning, every night and entire weekends through primary, middle and high school. Gets barely any time for classes, but he anyways just needs a passing grade (which teachers are happy to help him with). He joins advanced youth academies, travels for tournaments across the country. No time for distractions. No TV, no parties, barely any social time at all. He gets a sports scholarship in college. Finally goes pro. Continues training hard for every waking minute. Plays hard for years and is considered one of the best players in the world. Absolute peak of achievement in his field.
Then the night he wins a championship a reporter shoves a microphone in his face and asks "what are your thoughts on the geopolitical crisis developing in the East China sea?" And whatever he says will make the front page, generate countless social media clips and will undoubtedly influence the opinions of millions.
And this applies to every field. Look at all the VCs who make a lucky bet and then sit on a hundred podcasts proclaiming "world peace is easy, actually".
- cbare
One of the beautiful things about coding is the immediacy of the feedback. Screw up and your program crashes. Get it right and the machine does what you want. Tests turn green - that's nice. Subtle bugs can be deceptive, you might be thinking. True, but lots of bugs are not at all subtle.
When you get good at coding, you get a lot of positive reinforcement coming from a machine rather than other people. What that does to our psychology seems worth considering. Might we also have the same feeling of "I'm usually right!" and might that feeling transfer to domains where it's not backed up by any real learning?
- perilunar
This article linked at the bottom is interesting too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_supra_crepidam
"Let the cobbler not judge beyond the shoe"