> Seeing all of these people listed definitely lends some weight to the "it's kind of unreasonable for only 1-3 people to win a Nobel for this sort of work" view for me.
But what is the alternative? The article doesn't give much detail; it just says, "Why not award the scientific prizes to teams and organizations, just like the Peace Prize can be?
The price of reform is low, and the cost of avoiding it is high."
But this is clearly wrong. If you give the Nobel to a collaboration of 5000+ physicists, then you greatly devalue the Nobel prize. Either they are all laureates, including those hundreds of grad students who signed on for just six months, or maybe none of them really are. After the Nobel is devalued it will be nearly impossible to rebuild its status, or to replace it with another prize with equal status in the public consciousness.
The main problem described in the article is that the current system gives a "misleading impression of how a lot of science is actually done." I don't agree with this claim; anyone who has seen a picture or budget for LIGO knows that this isn't a one-man show.
And that is not the point anyway. The prize puts a human face on major scientific accomplishments. This is far more important than the possible downside of slightly misleading some people about how science works.
But what is the alternative? The article doesn't give much detail; it just says, "Why not award the scientific prizes to teams and organizations, just like the Peace Prize can be? The price of reform is low, and the cost of avoiding it is high."
But this is clearly wrong. If you give the Nobel to a collaboration of 5000+ physicists, then you greatly devalue the Nobel prize. Either they are all laureates, including those hundreds of grad students who signed on for just six months, or maybe none of them really are. After the Nobel is devalued it will be nearly impossible to rebuild its status, or to replace it with another prize with equal status in the public consciousness.
The main problem described in the article is that the current system gives a "misleading impression of how a lot of science is actually done." I don't agree with this claim; anyone who has seen a picture or budget for LIGO knows that this isn't a one-man show.
And that is not the point anyway. The prize puts a human face on major scientific accomplishments. This is far more important than the possible downside of slightly misleading some people about how science works.