29 October 2016 – For science watchers, Nobel Prize week feels like the Oscars, the Emmys, and all the birthdays rolled into one. Nobel prize week is a time when some showbiz glamour is sprinkled on the world of science and research. For a few days each year, the names and photographs of scientists are presented to the public, alongside — sometimes surprisingly detailed — descriptions of their discoveries and the benefits they provide. I focus on the physics, chemistry, and medicine awards. This weekend after a hectic three weeks of travel I have carved out some time to read more about the awards for the cellular mechanism of autophagy (or how cells digest and recycle their components) and of exotic states of matter that may pave the way for quantum computers.
The Nobels are intended to reward researchers for their contributions to humankind with a hefty cash windfall, no strings attached. They’re great for scientists, obviously, and their proud mothers.
That’s not to say that the Nobel prizes are immune from criticism. Do Alfred’s original categories truly reflect the span of modern science? And why limit the number of prizewinners to three?
Critics fairly point out that the prizes serve to elevate one, two, or, at most, three researchers into the pantheon of glory — and relegate the work of their collaborators to the unmentioned appendices. Especially if other worthies had the misfortune of dying too early, since Nobel rules stipulate against posthumous awards. In the process, they ignore the fact that science is rarely, if ever, an individual endeavor. Rather it’s the “teamiest” of team sports, with occasional solo breakthroughs, surely, but far more often the product of group effort.
Not surprisingly, Nobels are plagued by controversy, breeding resentments among researchers whose efforts the committees decided not to acknowledge. Obviously a simple solution to this problem would be to eliminate the restriction on the number of individuals who could be awarded the prize, a measure that would recognize all who contribute, from students to senior investigators.
Another option, promoted by many, would be to allow the science Nobels to go to organizations instead of individuals. The Nobel Peace Prize has taken this tack by, for instance, giving the European Union and Doctors Without Borders some of its previous awards. In science, that could mean an award for a university or a research initiative.
And for awhile the prizes had something of an image problem. Traditionally, they have been given to mostly old, white men. The events around the accolades had been very sombre, very exclusive. To try to overcome this, the Nobel organisations brought it marketing and media teams to steadily modernize the prizes’ image. Recently, they have ramped-up the entertainment factor in Nobel productions. The Peace Prize Concert — a massive concert on December 11, broadcast to over 100 countries and more than 500 million viewers — is now edgier, youth-focused and more inclusive. The new tagline for the Peace Prize Concert is “Peace is Loud” and you can see what they have done from this 4 minute “highlights” clip from last year’s concert:
In a world of increasing competition for eyeballs, attention and web clicks, it’s worth remembering that the Nobel prizes are a global, regular and almost-universally admired advertisement for the career that many dedicate their lives to — and frequently lament that the wider public does not appreciate. The Foundation’s use of social media has been brilliant: those 1 minute video clips on Twitter and Instagram announcing each winner, with links back to the Foundation site for detailed descriptions of the discoveries: “Speed Reads” to provide the gist of each award, plus “Nobel Dialogue” geared to nonacademic audiences.
And let’s not forget a huge string of events (many streamed on the Foundation’s website) culminating in the Peace Prize Concert I noted above.
The proliferation of academic prizes in recent years — some of which are much more lucrative than the Nobels — has increased the pressure on the Nobel Foundation to move with the times. It’s what corporate brand consultants call a clash between identity — what an organization chooses to do — and reputation, or how that action sits with what people on the outside think it should do.
But as one Nobel official put it this year: “I don’t think the reputation of the Nobel prize was built by people caring about the reputation of the prize.” And, for good measure, he adds: “It is not necessarily a remit to go out and find out what the world thinks of the Nobel prize and try and adjust our behavior because of that … It is interesting to know what the world thinks of the Nobel prize, but should that change our behavior?”
There is a motto at the Nobel Foundation: a good prize one year will be a better one the next. So far, it is difficult to argue with the benefit.
But, of course, there are issues. The Foundation has noted that these popular communication activities have required funding from external partners and sponsors, many of them being corporations. The Nobel organizations are hamstrung in this respect by Alfred Nobel’s last will. The document (signed in 1895) restricts how the organizations can use the money he left behind. They have no choice but to rely on external funding for their new communication activities. Major corporate partners include 3M, Ericsson and Volvo. Relying on such partners potentially weakens the Nobel organizations’ independence. And of late there has been much comment that the Peace Prize was becoming ruinously corrupted by commercial thinking. Other critics have said the concert trivializes the gravity of the prize.
Another major event that’s been updated is the annual Nobel Banquet. In the past the very formal multi-course dinner (complete with speeches and toasts) have been broken up by performances from ballet groups and opera ensembles. Last year, the organizers opted for more modern entertainment, including songs (in English) from the Swedish-Gambian soul-pop singer Seinabo Sey and Sweden’s Anna Ternheim.
These changes in brand and identity are difficult. But these these various activities follow a clear shift in the Nobel organizations’ communication planning. When I was in Stockholm last year it was explained to me that they now want to inspire and educate audiences — particularly young people — and not just transmit information about the prizes and laureates.
And let’s be honest. For all that, it’s an uphill struggle to balance the lightness of popular entertainment with the seriousness of the prizes. There will be inevitable missteps. The accolades themselves are tricky to communicate. The prizes are given in six very different fields: physics, peace, chemistry, literature, economic sciences, and physiology or medicine. The achievements behind them (especially in the scientific fields) are usually highly technical and difficult to explain in simple terms. But I think the Nobel folks will get the identity/reputation quandary solved.
POSTSCRIPT
As befits someone who made his fortune from dynamite, perhaps, Alfred Nobel was worried about a premature death. The will that set up prizes in his name is most well known for his much discussed — if vague — intention that the awards should recognize work with a benefit for humanity. Less well known is that the will concludes with an instruction from Alfred for a doctor to open his veins, allow him to bleed out, and then, unusually for the time, to burn his remains in a very recent development .. the new-fangled crematorium. This was a man determined to avoid being buried alive. Given his fear of being wrongly diagnosed as deceased, it must have been a shock for him to read his own obituary, published in error on the death of his brother almost a decade before his own death.