It’s the most celebratory time of the year, as some of the brightest minds in science win Nobel Prizes. Recent winners have a few things in common. They definitely have a great body of work. And they’re all men, they all live in high-income countries, and none of them are black.
Gary Lubukun and Victor Ambrose received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for their discovery of microRNAs and their role in gene regulation to help treat cancer. A series of papers led to this discovery, many of which listed Ambrose’s wife, Rosalind Lee, as the author. The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine was keen to recognize Lee on social media, but stopped short of awarding him a medal. They may think that one device per family is enough.
Lee’s omission may seem familiar. In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received the award for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. This was on the back of three papers published in the same issue. nature. One was co-authored by Wilkins, another was co-authored by Watson and Crick, and the third was an image captured by Rosalind Franklin of DNA with two strands. This image ended up in the hands of Watson and Crick before it was published and informed their DNA model as a double helix. Franklin was removed from the Nobel Prize trophy.
Perhaps the committee dislikes the name Rosalind. However, since its founding in 1901, only 972 people have won the Nobel Prize, and only 64 have been women. This year’s physics prize, awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for discoveries related to machine learning, had a particularly poor hit rate, with only five women winning the award so far.
At least women in science are getting some recognition. No black person has ever won a science Nobel Prize, and only 17 black people have won the peace, literature, and economics prizes combined. Many believe that Charles Drew, the African American who discovered how to preserve blood plasma for long periods of time, should have won the award in medicine, whereas Percy Julian, who discovered how to synthesize medicinal compounds from plants, should have won the award in chemistry. He claims that he was treated with contempt.
Geography also appears to play an important role in determining the winner. More than half of the awards went to people in North America, and most of the few winners from low-income countries had immigrated to North America or Europe by the time they won.
Some might say that all of this simply reflects the demographics of science. For example, fewer than 30 percent of researchers are women. But not giving credit where credit is due is useless, especially when the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine has marked the paper led by Lee as the key paper behind Lubukun and Ambros’ success. .
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the prizes in physics and chemistry, at least recognizes that this lack of diversity is a problem. Since 2019, nominators have been asked to consider gender, ethnicity and geography when choosing candidates who cannot identify themselves. Sounds good in theory, but since then, only six women and none of them have won in science, and none have been black.
You may be wondering why this is important. Awards are great honors, but they shouldn’t drive scientists. However, being a Nobel Prize winner opens doors for researchers and brings their work into the public consciousness. For many people, the annual Nobel Prize may be the only time they see a scientist’s name in the news headlines, but this prize plays a huge role in shaping our perception of science.
Part of the problem is that the prize structure, dictated by Alfred Nobel’s will, tends to enforce a “great man of history” approach to science that does not reflect the realities of modern research. The rules state that no more than three people can share the award, but this does not explain why Lee was left out of the winning duo of Lubukun and Ambros. Additionally, donations cannot be received after death. Otherwise, Ms. Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37, might have received the donation by now.
Of course, such issues are not new, and it seems unlikely that the Nobel Prize committee will deviate from the wishes of its sponsors, but that is no reason to ignore diversity. The committee needs to cast a wider net, not just for the sake of fairness, but if it wants to ensure that the awards continue to be taken seriously.
Alexandra Thompson is assistant news editor at New Scientist.
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