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This isn’t really apropos of anything, but I got to thinking about the use I make or allow of “Nobel prize winning” in things I write and edit. Sometimes it is obviously relevant; when I wrote about Paul Crutzen’s intervention in the geoengineering debate in my book, the meaning the prize had for his stature made it germane; when I wrote about Haber and Bosch the irony, especially in the context of Alfred Nobel’s business, seemed worth pointing up. But are other mentions worthwhile, or fair. Or are they thumbs on the scale? For example, if one says that Hans Bethe was a Nobel prize winner and nearby have cause to mention John von Neumann without such an accolade, will the reader take it that Bethe was a bigger deal in some way? When I mention Sydney Chapman close to where I mention Crutzen, do readers take the fact that I can’t say Chapman got a Nobel as evidence that he wasn’t a scientist of like stature (which he surely was; I would love to learn why his amazing work wasn’t honoured*).
I think most of the time when we are writing about science and a Nobel prize winner crops up we mention the accolade just to make our story stand a little taller — we think it will matter to the reader. But in a news story, as opposed to a feature that has time to get into who’s who and what’s what, are we not also adding a bit of bias, suggesting that this is the person to take seriously in the debate? And is mention of a Nobel prize that isn’t really germane to the story, just to the past accomplishments of one player in it, really just a way of puffing things up?
There’s an added wrinkle when you think across disciplines. It seems to me that it is in some ways easier to get a Nobel prize (or “Nobel prize”) in economics than in the natural sciences; the size of the pool is just smaller. And the rhetorical weight an economics prize adds to statements that are more likely to be policy-germane is as great or greater. So should Nobel prizes be mentioned for economists? After all, the prize isn’t for general stature, or for likeliness to say true things. It is for a specific piece of work that may have no relevance to the matter at hand.
Anyway, it seems a vaguely interesting ethical/standards-and-practices issue for people in my line of work to consider. I doubt anyone else cares all that much, and it’s quite possible most of my colleagues don’t, either. And it may be that this is mostly just to say “Sorry, Robert Shiller, I needed to cut a line…”
*When I say that I would love to know this I mean I would love someone to tell me, or to happen across the info while looking for something else, not that I would love it enough to go and , like, do some research…
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