The Nobel Prize is an extremely prestigious award. For
scientists, there are three categories up for grabs - Chemistry, Physics and
Physiology or Medicine. Whilst the majority of recipients are widely
regarded to have deserved and were rightfully given their prizes, there are a
few cases where the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee had been criticised
and has some persisting controversy.
Here are, in no particular order, some examples of these
cases. Some of them are more well known than others but they all represent
cases where a wince and a comment of 'oh dear!' may characterise the decision
of the Nobel Prize Committee that year:
1.Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz:
Egas Moniz, alongside Walter Hess, won the Nobel Prize in
1949 for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy. Otherwise
popularly known as lobotomy- although this term was not used until other
physicians -notably Walter Jackson Freeman II and James W. Watts developed a
modified technique.
Lobotomy for those that don't already know is neurosurgical
procedure that was designed to treat mental illness by severing nerve pathways
in the prefrontal cortex. This region of the brain is responsible for
processing and adapting thinking to meet goals but also controls speech
formation, gaze, memory and risk processing. The general idea was to induce a
calm docile state by severing what Moniz thought were abnormal neural
connections. He also believed that removing white matter fibres from the frontal
lobe would improve mental illness. He later developed a technique with his
staff member Pedro Almeida Lima that involved the leucotome - a needle-like
instrument with a wire loop that allowed them to separate white matter fibres.
To Moniz's credit, he never performed a surgery himself.
Lobotomy would often result in patients becoming incontinent
and epileptic, and experiencing severe changes in personality and ability to
function independently. Many also suffered a reduced consciousness, dementia
and in some cases death. In the best cases, patients would be left with
inertia, a lack of response, self-awareness and emotional numbness.
Before being awarded the Nobel, Moniz was already being
criticized for his understatements of complications, his lack of documentation
and for failing to following up with patients. Moniz defended himself by
claiming that the procedure was always safe but did concede that patients did
not benefit if they had already deteriorated from the mental illness. He also
stated that the behaviour and personality deterioration that could occur was
outweighed by the benefits- i.e. the debilitating effects of the illness would
be reduced.
It is important to note that leukotomy was a desperate
attempt to gain some control over mental illness. There were very little
options for the treatment of severe mental illness. However, even before
Moniz won the prize, medical associations such as the AMA, and psychiatrists
were denouncing the procedure and warning against it. The damage was visible.
To make it even worse, Moniz's poor scientific practice made his subsequent
awarding of the prize even more incredulous and bewildering.
2.Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger.
Fibiger was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine in 1926 for discovering a new kind of roundworm that he claimed caused
stomach cancer. Unfortunately for him, he had made some rather significant
errors in his data analysis.
In 1907, Fibiger was investigating tuberculosis in lab rats
and found some stomach tumours in rats collected from Estonia. He then
discovered that these rats also had nematodes (worms) with eggs. After
investigating for years, he identified the nematode as a new species and
demonstrated that this nematode could induce stomach cancer. This
conclusion was supported by two Japanese scientists Katsusaburo Yamagiwa and
Koichi Ichikawa who proved that carcinoma could be produced in rabbits by
painting coal tar on their ears. Whilst this could now regarded as unethical,
in those days, virtually nothing was known about cancer development. Yamagiwa
was nominated for the Nobel Prize alongside Fibiger but was excluded in favour
of Fibiger.
Whilst Fibiger's discovery of the stomach cancer-causing
worm went mostly unchallenged in his lifetime, questions were raised after his
death. Vitamin A deficiency was found to cause tumours and cancers, and
Fibiger's rats had been fed a vitamin A -free diet. Meanwhile, it was also
found that the cancerous tumours that Fibiger had found were not cancerous at
all. It was then concluded that the worms had caused tissue irritation.
Combined with the vitamin A deficiency, this caused non-cancerous tumours to
develop. Fibiger unfortunately was very wrong.
To be fair to him, Fibiger never, as far as can be proven, set out to defraud anyone. However, his awarding of the Nobel prize -
and the exclusion of Yamagiwa, is considered by some to be a mistake and
undeserved.
Still, it may be interesting to know that whilst
Fibiger's worm G. neoplasticum, does not cause cancer, some species of flukes-
another type of worm have now been linked to cancer development in humans.
3. Frederick Banting and John Macleod
In 1923, Frederick Banting and John Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery and extraction of Insulin. In 1921, Banting - a surgeon by training, travelled to Toronto to explain an idea he had to John Macleod. Earlier research had discovered that an extract from a certain region of the pancreas had a normalising effect on blood sugars. Banting believed that this region could be isolated and would secrete a substance that could treat diabetes. Macleod was sceptical but agreed to giving Banting some lab space - and an undergraduate to assist him; Charles Best.
Charles Best.
Together, Banting, Best and Macleod were able to extract insulin from a
pancreas. Macleod invited biochemist James Collip to join their efforts to
purify insulin, and in January 1922, insulin was injected into a diabetic for
the first time- 14 year old Leonard Thompson, who was dying at the Toronto
General Hospital. Before this discovery, type 1 diabetes were almost uniformly
fatal. Leonard Thompson did die 12 years later- but of pneumonia. By
November 1922, Insulin was offered for sale to the general public, saving
countless lives. Notably, the patent for Insulin was sold to the University
of Toronto for 1 dollar.
In a move that is known to have incensed Banting, Best was
not included or mentioned in the awarding of the 1923 Nobel Prize. Neither was
Collip. Banting shared his prize money with Best, whilst Macleod shared his
with Collip. In addition, it has also been argued that Nicolae Paulescu
should also have been awarded the prize. Whilst these four were the first to
use insulin on human patients, Paulescu was the first to actually determine
that the pancreas was producing a substance that could normalise blood sugar
levels. He had developed an extract that he injected into a diabetic dog -
treating its diabetes.
Ultimately, three people that arguably deserved to be
acknowledged as well were excluded and did not receive recognition for their
efforts. The Nobel Prize cannot be shared more than three ways so at least two
people would have been left out. So, should the Nobel Prize have also been
awarded to the man who started it all off, the man who was instrumental to its
extraction for human use, or the man who was essential to its purification?
This three-person limit is still widely criticised and is still controversial-
modern science often requires on massive collaborative teams.
Below are some key examples where the awarding of the Nobel
Prize excluded key contributors and are still widely debated:
1.Otto Hahn.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the
discovery of nuclear fission. However, whilst Hahn performed the experiments,
Lise Meitner provided the theoretical explanation and coined the term
'fission', alongside her nephew Otto Frisch. Fritz Strassmann was also
essential to the work and was a full collaborator. All three were essential for
the discovery of nuclear fission.
2. Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle.
Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle were awarded for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974 for the discovery of pulsars - or rotating neutron stars that emit radiation. This excluded Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the graduate student working under Hewish. Bell Burnell was the one to actually see a strange signal and spent three months ruling out errors. Some nights, she would be reviewing at much as 96 feet of paper data. Initially, Hewish insisted the signal was caused by interference in the detection equipment and was not significant, forcing Bell Burnell to be persistent in the face of scepticism. Bell later opined that being a student and a woman 'demoted [her] standing in terms of receiving a Nobel Prize'.
3. James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
I've already moaned about this in my articles about
photograph 51 and Rosalind Franklin so I'll rein it in. But the structure of
DNA would not have been made without Rosalind Franklin, and she should have
received a prize - even posthumously.
I'm going to call it a day there before I end up having
another rant/ vent about the lack of justice done to Rosalind Franklin and how
James Watson was an absolute ar*e.
Overall, these are just some notable examples where the
Nobel Prize may not have gone to the person -or the people that deserved it.
There are likely other cases where scientists were excluded, or the research
arguably didn't call for the awarding of such a prestigious prize. Some would
argue that the Nobel Prize itself and its rules about who can receive an award
just isn't suited for modern science anymore. However, the Nobel Prize is
still, quite rightly, regarded as an honour. In a world where science isn't
always given the respect and recognition it deserves, it can be argued that any
awards that give recognition and acknowledge to its advancement should be
embraced, no matter what mistakes might have once been made.
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