GoKawiilNobel disease or Nobelitis is an informal term for the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. [1] [2] [3] 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, [4] [5] although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals. [6] Paul Nurse , co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine , warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you". Nurse also noted the media's role in reinforcing this tendency, observing that after receiving his Nobel Prize, journalists had begun to take him seriously when he commented on issues about which he knew little. [7]
Implications [ edit ]
While it remains unclear whether Nobel winners are statistically more prone to critical thinking errors than other scientists, the phenomenon provides an existence proof that being an authority in one field does not necessarily make one an authority in any other field, and, 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.[8][6]
Nobel disease demonstrates that, for some prize winners, being universally hailed as correct appears to bolster the individual laureate's confirmation bias more than it does their skepticism.[9] Milton Friedman, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976, said this of the Nobel disease as it relates to his economic thinking towards an "antidote":[10]