A Nobel calling: Predicting the science Nobel Prizes winners
— -- Early awakenings are seldom more pleasant for scientists than when they are brought about by a telephone call from Stockholm.
Some of the most eminent names in science will tumble out of bed this week with news that they've been awarded a Nobel Prize, the summit of scientific prestige. And not a bad haul of cash besides at 10 million Swedish Kronor. That's a lot of kronor even for the best-funded researcher, about $1.4 million at today's exchange rates. Plus you get a medal and a diploma, a sweet deal all around.
With the Medical Prize up first, starting Monday, the annual guessing game about likely winners occupies spare lab hours everywhere. David Pendlebury, a science historian and analyst with Thompson Reuters, part of the Reuters news empire, last week unveiled likely picks based on a tabulation of citations in research studies.
"Citations are the formalized repayment of intellectual debts," Pendlebury says, with researchers acknowledging in science studies those whose ideas are behind their discoveries in the references they choose to highlight in their papers.
Basically, Nobel success derives from merit, Pendlebury and his colleagues argue, with the prize going to the most influential researchers, ones whose publications attract thousands of citations from later researchers. "Citations give a very clear signal of what the scientific community feels is important," he says.
Well, maybe. Pendlebury acknowledges that factors like the prize's limit to three researchers, and a fondness for spreading recipients among different countries, also seems to play a role in the Nobel. But based on who's crediting who for original ideas, scientists whose work received 99.9% more citations than others over the last two decades, he suggested the following as possible winners this week:
Medicine, Monday, Oct. 6
— Shizuo Akira of Osaka University, Bruce Beutler of The Scripps Research Institute and Jules A. Hoffman French Academy of Sciences for immune system discoveries.
