In a brief letter to Nature this week six researchers say that the time lag between scientific discoveries – particularly in the basic physical sciences – and Nobel Prizes to salute them is getting longer and longer. If this keeps up, they drily note, nobod will live long enough to receive a Nobel. Maybe the no-posthumous-award rule must be lifted. There are many plausible reasons for the trend. Maybe it is that there are so many more scientists these days, and discovery is such a group process, that singling out the best of the bunch – and narrowing credit to just three people – has gotten harder. But to argue that it is just the opposite, that the pace of discovery has gotten too slow, seems counterintuitive. One might think that it is easier to choose the best (or least bad) from a shorter list.
No science journalist is happier with the result than a certain amiable and imaginative fellow at New Jersey's Stevens Institute of Technology. He was for years an enterprising reporter and columnist for Scientific American back in the 80s and 90s. There his biggest hit was a book, "The End of Science." He argued that scientists have already figured out most of the essentials of how the universe works. After all, if something is discovered or understood, the list of unknown or unexplained things gets shorter. It's like peak oil. Only so much. But whether we're near the end is hard to tell. It really was a marvelous book. I never really bought into his thesis as something he deep down believed. But it was a terrifically provocative, some say outrageous, question: "Do you think science is over?" He knocked on the doors of some of the most famous scientists in the world. He asked. They nearly all said no way in hell is it over. There is plenty left. Several got so steamed that, well, their retorts made for a very enjoyable book.
Here is his response to news on the wait time for a ticket to Stockholm:
- National Geographic News – John Horgan: Opinion: Science Is Running Out of Things to Discover / The advancing age when Nobelists receive their prizes could suggest fewer breakthroughs are waiting to happen ;
Horgan is a good man to spend some time with around an outdoor fire (did that once with him at, I am quite sure it was, Times-man George Johnson's house in Santa Fe). He lives on the slightly gonzo side of life, looking at things from angles I'd not have thunk up. He tells great stories with disarming charm. In that vein he prefaces this fresh and self-congratulatory column this way, "Call it confirmation bias…." Indeed, I'd say so. Then he says the new observation of the growing tendency of Nobelists to be in their dotage when they get the call with a Swedish accent is one more sign that "science – especially fundamental physics -.. is running out of gas, just as I predicted in my 1996 book The End of Science." That's an as-written quote including the hyperlink. He refers to an unpublished paper by the Nature letter's authors that says they agree with him that the delay may imply a decay in physics. He also and fairloy refers to a counter argument from the fine Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees, who attributes it to a backlog of qualified people. Perhaps Horgan and Reese are both correct. After all, if nearly all that physics (chemistry ditto) has left are iterative discoveries, there always have been far more of those than true groundbreakers. That makes for a longer list. Horgan also concedes that the latest to the lineup may get it quite soon: Guth and Linde and whoever best represents the team that with a gorgeous South Pole telescope apparently found inflation's gravity-wave signature in the sky's cosmic microwave background.
At least physicists still have dark matter and dark energy to figure out. Then there's the string hypothesis, looking for data that would make it a theory. Extra dimensions. Wormholes to other universes. Axions. ETI. Unknown unknowns. Gotta be.
Good column, well told, Horgan.
A few other outlets picked up this news:
- USA Today – Traci Watson: Dying for a Nobel? Winners snag prizes at older ages.
- Motherboard – Jason Koebler: The Nobel Prize Is About to Break Because Everyone Winning It Is So Old ;
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