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They may certainly have a point, but many Nobel Prize winners do have a track record of going off the deep end which is something to keep in mind when an articl
by daedrdev 1y ago
They may certainly have a point, but many Nobel Prize winners do have a track record of going off the deep end which is something to keep in mind when an article tries to justify their points using Noble Prizes
edit: I'm just trying to say that "Having a Nobel Prize" doesn't mean they are an authority on subjects they talk about since many wen't on to promote homeopathy, aliens, believed aids wasn't caused by HIV, don't believe in climate change, etc."
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoEh, I think that is just the result of more attention/funding. Plenty of scientists have wacky ideas (very much encouraged!) that do not pan out upon further investigation. If you are a no name lab that tries a novel idea that fails, nobody knows or cares. “Celebrity” scientist with a failed idea and now you are off the deep end.
- api 1y agoThe blaming of cliques of scientists for rejecting alternate ideas was cliche and kind of a red flag. That does happen, of course. Science is conservative because if we have a theory that is a good fit to the data it should take a lot of evidence to unseat that theory and the new one must also fit all the data the old one did. (Unless some data was wrong, but that also takes evidence.) But this is also something every crank says, and loudly. The more obsessed and loud someone is with a conspiracy against them the more they sound like a crank. Was Einstein or quantum theory instantly rejected and held down forever by a conspiracy? Not really. There were skeptics but I seem to recall these ideas taking hold pretty fast because they fit a lot of anomalous data very well.
- jshaqaw 1y agoAgreed. People point to the edge cases where orthodoxy and conformity crushed the brilliant innovator but for every one of those there are 1000 cranks or embittered dead end researchers claiming that only a conspiracy prevented their genius from being recognized.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- indigodaddy 1y agoThis sort of argument implies that Riess must have turned into a crank since his Nobel prize winning turn... Seems unlikely though doesn't it?
- api 1y agoHappens so often they call it the Nobel curse. It’s related to why famous celebrities and billionaires often lose their minds. Human success is self limiting. It begets failure by convincing people they are “special.” Pride comes before a fall is not because god punishes people for pride or something. It’s a statement of cause and effect. Pride causes a fall.
- dylan604 1y agoHaving hesitancy of any new theory that directly conflicts with the known/accepted theories is not a bad thing. Telling someone that their theory is so different than what everyone else thinks that they might want to go back and double/triple check just in case someone forgot to carry a one or something else simple/embarrassing is just a CYA bit of advice. Other quotes like "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" would also be apropos.
- jerf 1y agoIf even getting a Nobel Prize isn't enough to protect someone from being accused of deviating from orthodoxy and therefore ipso facto "off the deep end", then the entire claim the science apparatus makes about being all about ideas and not about orthodoxy is falsified, and all subsequent beliefs in a belief net based on that proposition need to be updated accordingly.
- hiddencost 1y ago[flagged]
- staunton 1y ago"Being all about ideas" implies that whether someone has a Nobel prize should play a very small role when evaluating an idea. If the idea sounds implausible, it's OK to say so, no matter whose idea it is. Some people will still look into it.
- eej71 1y agoI think this is a misunderstanding of the underlying issue. It isn't about protection from straying from some level of orthodoxy. It's about people who are incredibly brilliant in one area of their life - and yet be incredibly dumb in another. I've always seen Linus Pauling as an interesting example of this. Brilliant in some ways, but going all in on Vitamin C is just weird. I see the basic claim as - sometimes these prizes - well intentioned as they are - may lift critical guard rails that unintentionally let them drive off into their weeds. They go deeper and harder into the weeds because the prestige that comes with these prizes creates a halo effect that blunts or hides critical criticism that can no longer reach them.
- kadoban 1y agoSomeone getting the Nobel Prize and then being assumed correct from then on would be approximately the opposite of science. They can put their ideas out there, and people can evaluate them on their merits just fine, with maybe a bias towards the ideas being interesting due to the source. What's wrong with that?
- daedrdev 1y ago
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoIs there a correlation between being born in Superfund sites and being a Nobel Prize winner?
- bsoles 1y agoReminds me of Roger Penrose more recently. When Nobel Prize winners start making YouTube rounds, you have a good indicator of someone going of the deep end. Thank God, Eric Weinstein doesn't have a Nobel Prize...
- gamma42 1y agoHow has Penrose gone off the deep end?
- ryandamm 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease This is a decently-well documented observation. (I hesitate to call it a "phenomenon" as that would imply an actual casual mechanism.)