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In many fields, but not all, essentially only a few small number of people can win. You must have trained with someone who won or was part of a group who won. h
by light_hue_1 2y ago
In many fields, but not all, essentially only a few small number of people can win. You must have trained with someone who won or was part of a group who won. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-024-04936-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-024-04936-1
This isn't impressive. It's a sign of concentration of power, of nepotism, and of exclusionary policies. It's the usual dirty politics we see all over the place.
- robertlagrant 2y agoIt's not power when it's a voluntary prize. My kids' school only awards raffle tickets to kids that go to the school. What an awful concentration of power, because power is the only lens through which to view anything.
- light_hue_1 2y agoThis would be a valid analogy if there was a secret group at your school only handing out tickets to kids from the same extended families and no one else. How you don't see that as an abuse of power is beyond me. Sometimes HN feels eerily like talking to Trump supporters that rationalize any abuse.
- gwerbret 2y agoI think your concern might apply when there's a question about whether the discovery actually has significant merit. Context is important. In this case, the discovery of microRNAs ushered in a whole new area of biology and medicine, and led to techniques (easy methods to selectively target and suppress gene expression) that facilitated discoveries in many other areas.
- light_hue_1 2y agoNo. It has nothing to do with the discovery being of significant merit. There are countless discoveries of significant merit that aren't rewarded by the Committee. They have many choices at their disposal. And they intentionally choose from only a small narrow pool of potential winners to keep it in the family. That's corruption.
- gwerbret 2y agoI think you may have missed the point. By "significant merit" I meant "significant enough merit to be very deserving of a Nobel prize". The Karolinksa crew can award and have awarded the prize for nonsense in the past, but this wasn't one of those instances. Of course, if your point was "it doesn't matter how deserving the winners are, they're all corrupt" then that's the sort of argument that facts can't counter.