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Academia has managed to function just fine without this prize for a long time. What's the sudden need for this, aren't academics supposed to be intrinsically mo

Academia has managed to function just fine without this prize for a long time. What's the sudden need for this, aren't academics supposed to be intrinsically motivated people, rather than extrinsically motivated? I've always disliked the Nobel prize as a concept too. Is this prize really going to cause anyone to become an academic? If not then its just rewarding persistence and good luck, which just re-enforces the staus quo.

belorn 14y ago
I thought everyone said that researched was extrinsically motivated thanks to patents, and without those no one would ever do any medical research. Prize money and intrinsically motivations sounds as a nice alternative.
amirmc 14y ago
I do understand your viewpoint. I doubt anyone will become an academic because of the prize but perhaps some school students out there will consider science/academia because they hear about the work of one of the winners of the prize. Public exposure of important works (and the labs that did them) is still a good thing. Academia would function fine without such prizes but even then, people within the research community would still want to recognise and celebrate important work/advances somehow.
melling 14y ago
There are 7 billion people on the planet. How many of us are actually working the "important" problems? A few million? Tens of million? Designing a system or "game" that gets more people working on some of the more difficult problems is a . The X-Prizes and DARPA Challenges are others that seem to be effective: http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Ch... If we could channel all of the Words with Friends time, for example, into "Protein Folding with Friends", we might help to solve some really important problems. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_protein?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_prot...
maxerickson 14y ago
I don't think Milner is trying to motivate scientists, I think he is trying to see what happens when they get a break from writing grants (which is pretty contrary to enforcing the status quo). The people getting these certainly have more flexibility to work on blue sky projects.
- bpicolo 14y ago
  Or he wants to encourage more people to work on immortality research.

belorn 14y ago

I thought everyone said that researched was extrinsically motivated thanks to patents, and without those no one would ever do any medical research. Prize money and intrinsically motivations sounds as a nice alternative.

amirmc 14y ago

I do understand your viewpoint. I doubt anyone will become an academic because of the prize but perhaps some school students out there will consider science/academia because they hear about the work of one of the winners of the prize. Public exposure of important works (and the labs that did them) is still a good thing. Academia would function fine without such prizes but even then, people within the research community would still want to recognise and celebrate important work/advances somehow.

melling 14y ago

There are 7 billion people on the planet. How many of us are actually working the "important" problems? A few million? Tens of million? Designing a system or "game" that gets more people working on some of the more difficult problems is a . The X-Prizes and DARPA Challenges are others that seem to be effective: http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Ch... If we could channel all of the Words with Friends time, for example, into "Protein Folding with Friends", we might help to solve some really important problems. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_protein?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_prot...

maxerickson 14y ago

I don't think Milner is trying to motivate scientists, I think he is trying to see what happens when they get a break from writing grants (which is pretty contrary to enforcing the status quo). The people getting these certainly have more flexibility to work on blue sky projects.

bpicolo 14y ago
Or he wants to encourage more people to work on immortality research.