I’ve been thinking about Zuska’s post on the negative impacts the Nobel Prizes might be having on the practice of good science. She quotes N. David Mermin, who opines:
[T]he system [of prizes] had become a destructive force…these things are systematically sought after by organized campaigns, routinely consuming oceans of time and effort.
I feel the pull of this worry — although I’m also sympathetic to a view Rob Knop voiced in a comment:
What I like about the Nobel Prize : once a year, there is a celebration of science that almost impinges upon the public consciousness. Yes, we are probably over-elevating individual scientists, and yes, for some, the prize has become a goal rather than a recognition, and yes, doubtless there are biases in the selection. But, it’s nice to see the world celebrating and being excited about science occasionally.
No doubt, part of this is my persistent belief that science is cool, dammit, and the public ought to get psyched about it. And, part of it has to do with my two degrees of separation from Nobel Prize winners this year. But I think the concerns raised in Zuska’s post are good ones.
And, I think at least a certain part of the concern ties in naturally to things I’ve been working on with the U6 soccer team I coach.*
My players are five- and six-year-olds, and the things that have been hardest for them to learn haven’t been skills like dribbling the ball or aiming their kicks. Rather, teamwork has been the challenging concept. At first, they didn’t really have a view that they should use their teammates to move the ball where they wanted to or to score on the other team. They seemed to view it as super-important that they, personally, be the one to kick the ball into the goal.
After working on this a lot, the players are actually to the point of viewing goals as the team’s achievement, rather than the achievement of any particular member of the team. They see themselves as part of a concerted process that makes the goals happen. If the team gets a goal, everyone on the team who participated in making that happen — whether by kicking the ball to a teammate, or blocking someone on the other team who was trying to steal the ball, or actually getting the ball into the goal — shares in the achievement.
Honestly, talking to my mom about her participation in the COBE research — a “cast of thousands” research project if ever there was one — it feels like lots of these researchers in the trenches have that same kind of attitude. The goal isn’t attained without the concerted efforts of the team. When the goal is attained, the entire team gets to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. The Nobel puts an artificial ceiling on the number of people allowed to take credit for a particular achievement (three), but the scientists working on the big teams know there’s no way to accomplish what they’ve accomplished with just three people.
There is a way in which the Nobel does artificially recast scientific achievement in terms of the brilliance of a few individuals, and this certainly has the potential to undermine enthusiastic scientific collaborations and to insert intra-team competition. I’ve seen the soccer games in which one member of a team would sooner miss out on the team scoring a goal than not be the player to score that goal — would rather be the star than a part of a successful team. I’ve seen similar behavior in science as well. In either context, it’s ugly. But, if being a star is what gets you rewards, it’s also completely understandable.
The problem is, star systems don’t necessarily promote better soccer or better science.
In the coaches training meeting I had this summer, I was told that the typical age at which kids drop out of youth soccer is twelve or thirteen, and the typical reason kids give for dropping out is that it’s gotten so competitive that it’s no longer fun. The outside pressure — from coaches and parents especially — to win, win, win! just sucks all the fun out of the game and undermines the team comradery that the younger kids get to have.
I wonder how much the model of science as high-stakes competition might be doing to drive away the folks who want to do kick-ass science because it’s fun. This is something we should think about.
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*Let the record reflect that I am not a habitual user of sports analogies. It only happens once in a while. But I suppose this is what happens when you trick people who aren’t already sporty into coaching their kids’ soccer teams.
They may drop out at U12 and U13, but sometimes they come back if you promote having fun and you can keep the team alive. I manage (and my husband coaches) a U19 team (and a U13 team). We thought the U19 team was going to fold three years ago, but many of the girls who had quit in middle school returned. Now, our U19 team has many of the same kids, who played as 11 and 12 year olds, back playing again.
I would suggest that Nobel’s are so rare they do little to disrupt teamwork, and I think it is pretty well believed that in Physics now, many prizes will be won by huge teams, essentially, although one or two people will be honored. The lobbying for the prize is much more subtle and I don’t think it really takes an ocean of effort. In essence the PR machine towards an end-goal of a prize is essentially already in place for big name scientists because reputation greases the wheels for both publications and funding. If it may also win a prize, so be it.
Your comments also feed back into Rob’s point; while bringing cool science briefly into the mainstream, the Nobel format may have the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the ‘lone, maverick, genius’ sterotype of the scientist.
“I wonder how much the model of science as high-stakes competition might be doing to drive away the folks who want to do kick-ass science because it’s fun. This is something we should think about.”
That was a great post Dr. Free-ride! I think that the competitive atmosphere in science labs is quite often a source of unhappiness. The comment seems to me to be right on, but as a junior-assistance-science-cog, I don’t feel like there is much that I can do to change it. I think some very good PIs know that this is true, and set the tone. A lab that I once worked in, the professor sort of gave me this sort of prepared speech when I joined the lab. It went something along the lines of “you are joining a family…” and also included an admonition that “…you will be kicked out of the lab if I find out your are competing with you fellow group members.” It seemed a little strange to me at the time, but now I know that he was setting the tone. That was a great lab to work in.
“I wonder how much the model of science as high-stakes competition might be doing to drive away the folks who want to do kick-ass science because it’s fun. This is something we should think about.”
I think this is VERY important. I advise and have advised a lot of really talented women in our PhD program, and most of them express a lot of concern about this. Some have dropped out and followed a more traditional track because of it. Most gravitate to the less competitive members of our department because the pressure is just plain uncomfortable in the other labs. Personally, this is one of the main reasons that I chose ag science rather than medical science (I had the option after my postdoc to go either way). At that time, ag science was decidedly lower stakes and much more friendly. One could still do a lot of really great science, though. Lately things have been changing and we have been strongly pressured to follow the medical science model (because of course it brings in more money). NIH grants are now favored, even for us in ag. Model systems like Arabidopsis and yeast are favored at the expense of important crop plants. This is having a powerful effect on the types of research we pursue. Probably a lot of stuff that isn’t NIH-relevant, but is still very good and important ag science, doesn’t get done.
Good points. It is worth pointing out, however, that some people enjoy “science as high-stakes competition”.
Well of course nobody denies that some people “enjoy science as a high-stakes competition”. But, I’d say, ON AVERAGE, women are less likely to enjoy or be comfortable with this aspect because women do tend to be raised in ways that emphasize cooperation over competition, whereas ON AVERAGE men are more likely to thrive in that environment. And of course that is not ALL men, or even the brightest men, in my experience. So, given that, perhaps it would be nice if the cooperative model could also be rewarded and encouraged. The “all or nothing” attitude that seems so prevalent now, at least in my own environment, says that either you’re a big star, or you’re nothing…..
Interesting discussion!
Listening to interviews with the laureates, I noted that nearly all of them actively expressed how much the achievement was a team effort. I don’t recall hearing that quite as much in previous years, when it seemed quite acceptable to just “bask in the glory”. Perhaps it’s becoming part of a ritual, like some of the standard phrases used by winners of Academy Awards.