Sean Carroll interviews Kip Thorne, who got the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish for the detection of gravitational waves.
0:09:21 KT: And I told him in no uncertain terms, the Nobel committee has an obligation to educate the public about the importance of collaborations. There are some kinds of major scientific breakthroughs that can only be done by a big collaboration, and that the process of collaboration is absolutely crucial for success. And you’re not doing a good job of educating the public about that. And he said, “Well, yes,” he said, “I’ve been sensitive to this. There are a number of members of the committee that don’t agree that our principal goal with the Nobel prize is to educate the public about the importance of science, the value of science, what has been done, and three individuals are better icons for science than a big team.” And so that’s how the conversation went. And they’re still struggling with this question of…H/t 3QD.
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