Nobel disease

Nobel disease is a hypothesized affliction that results in certain Nobel Prize winners embracing strange or scientifically unsound ideas, usually later in life.[1][2] It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise[3][4] combined with a tendency for Nobel winners to be the kinds of scientists who think in unconventional ways.[5]

Implications

While it remains unclear whether Nobel winners are statistically more prone to critical thinking errors than are other scientists, the phenomenon is of interest because it provides an existence proof that: (1) being an authority in one field does not necessarily make one an authority in any other field, and (2) to the extent that winning a Nobel Prize serves as a proxy indicator of scientific brilliance and high general intelligence, such characteristics are not incompatible with irrationality.[6] Nobel disease also serves to demonstrate that, for some prize winners, being universally hailed as "right" appears to bolster the individual laureate's confirmation bias more than it does his or her skepticism.[7]

Winners who have exhibited symptoms

Linus Pauling

Pauling won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A decade before winning the prize, he was diagnosed with Bright's disease which he treated in part by ingesting vitamin supplements, which he claimed dramatically improved his condition. He later espoused taking high doses of vitamin C to reduce the likelihood and severity of experiencing the common cold. Pauling himself consumed amounts of vitamin C on a daily basis that were more than 120 times the recommended daily intake. He further argued that megadoses of vitamin C have therapeutic value for treating schizophrenia and for prolonging cancer patients' lives. These claims are not supported by the best available science.[6][1][2]

Kary Mullis

Mullis won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Mullis disagreed with the accepted, and scientifically verified, view that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, questioned the evidence for human contributions to global warming, professed a belief in astrology, and claimed that he once encountered a fluorescent raccoon that spoke with him.[3][6][8]

Luc Montagnier

Montagnier won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 2009, in a non-peer-reviewed paper in a journal that he had founded, Montagnier claimed that solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses could emit low frequency radio waves that induce surrounding water molecules to become arranged into “nanostructures”. He suggested water could retain such properties even after the original solutions were massively diluted, to the point where the original DNA had effectively vanished, and that water could retain the “memory” of substances with which it had been in contact -- claims that place his work in close alignment with the pseudoscientific tenets of homeopathy.[2][9]He has supported the scientifically discredited view that vaccines cause autism and has claimed that antibiotics are of therapeutic value in the treatment of autism.[6]

Nikolaas Tinbergen

Tinbergen won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. During his Nobel acceptance speech, Tinbergen promoted the widely discredited[10] "refrigerator mother" hypothesis of the causation of autism, thereby setting a "nearly unbeatable record for shortest time between receiving the Nobel Prize and saying something really stupid about a field in which the recipient had little experience.”[2] In 1985, Tinbergen coauthored a book with is wife[11] that recommended the use of "holding therapy" for autism, a form of treatment that is empirically unsupported and that can be physically dangerous.[1][6]

Brian Josephson

Josephson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973. Josephson has promoted a number of scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs, including the homeopathic notion that water can somehow "remember" the chemical properties of substances diluted within it, the view that transcendental meditation is helpful for bringing unconscious traumatic memories into conscious awareness, and the possibility that humans may be able to communicate with each other through the use of telepathy.[3][6]

John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh

(Physics, 1904) Paranormal[12]

Joseph Thomson

(Physics, 1906) Psychic, dowsing and paranormal[13]

Charles Richet

(Physiology or Medicine, 1913) ESP, paranormal, dowsing, ghosts[14]

Otto Stern

(Physics, 1943) Psychokinesis[15]

William Shockley

(Physics, 1956) Racialism and eugenics[3][6]

Richard Smalley

(Chemistry, 1996) Creationism, Intelligent Design and evolution denial[6][16][17]

See also

References
  1. Gorski, David. "High dose vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?". Science Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  2. Gorski, David. "Luc Montagnier and the Nobel Disease". Science Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  3. Winter, David. "The nobel diseease". Sciblogs. Science Media Center. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  4. Berezow, Alex (18 December 2016). "Paul Krugman Now Has Nobel Disease". American Council on Science and Health. American Council on Science and Health. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  5. Egnor, Michael (14 May 2020). "Thinking outside the box is not a disease". Mind Matters News. Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  6. Basterfield, Candice; Lilienfeld, Scott; Bowes, Shauna; Costello, Thomas (2020). "The Nobel disease: When intelligence fails to protect against irrationality". Skeptical Inquirer. 44 (3): 32–37.
  7. Diamandis, Eleftherios P. (1 January 2013). "Nobelitis: a common disease among Nobel laureates?". Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 51 (8). doi:10.1515/cclm-2013-0273. ISSN 1437-4331.
  8. Mullis, Kary (1998). Dancing Naked in the Mind Field. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0679442554.
  9. Hall, Harriett. "The Montagnier "Homeopathy" Study". Science Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  10. Folstein, S.; Rutter, M. (1977). "Genetic influences and infantile autism". Nature. 265 (5596): 726–728. Bibcode:1977Natur.265..726F. doi:10.1038/265726a0. PMID 558516.
  11. Tinbergen, N.; Tinbergen, E.A. (1985). Autistic children: New hope for a cure. London: George Allen and Unwin. ISBN 978-0041570106.
  12. Oppenheim, Janet (1988). The other world : spiritualism and psychical research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge Cambridgeshire New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 331-346. ISBN 0-521-34767-X. OCLC 10606094.
  13. Thompson, J.J. (1937). Recollections and reflections. MacMillan. ASIN B00085DBIK.
  14. Richet, Charles (1923). Thirty years of psychical research; being a treatise on metaphysics. MacMillan. ASIN B000KXJEKY.
  15. Totton, Nick (2003). Psychoanalysis and the paranormal : lands of darkness. London New York: Karnac. p. 122. ISBN 1-85575-985-3. OCLC 795127018.
  16. "CREATION SCIENTISTS APPLAUD PA JUDGE'S RULING AGAINST 'INTELLIGENT DESIGN' -- DRESSING UP ID IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL SCIENCE". montanasnews.tv. 14 April 2015. Archived from the original on 14 April 2015. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  17. "Creation Scientists in Three-Way Debate with Intelligent Design, Evolution". The Christian Post. 22 December 2005. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
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