诺贝尔奖做错了什么？

ALBERT EINSTEIN doubted the existence of black holes. In 1939 he even tried to prove that the celestial objects—which are so dense that light itself cannot escape their gravitational pull—do not exist in the “real world”. But in 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Roger Penrose, a British physicist, wrote a groundbreaking paper that used maths to prove that black holes are a necessary consequence of the theory of relativity. This week, aged 89, Sir Roger won the Nobel prize for physics for his seminal work.

爱因斯坦曾经质疑黑洞的存在。1939年，他甚至尝试证明黑洞这一天体——密度很高以至于光都无法从其引力牵引中逃脱——在“真实世界”中并不存在。但在爱因斯坦逝世十年后，1965年，英国物理学家罗杰·彭罗斯发表了一篇开创性的论文，利用数学原理证明了黑洞是相对论的必然结果。而直到本周，已经89岁的罗杰爵士才刚刚因这一研究获得了诺贝尔物理学奖。

It may seem odd awarding science’s most prestigious prize for a discovery 55 years ago. But the period between when Nobel-worthy discoveries are made, and when they are recognised, much like space-time itself, has curved upwards since the prizes were first handed out in 1901 (see chart).

将世界上最具声望的奖项授予给55年前的科学研究似乎很奇怪，但科学发现和获诺奖之间的时间跨度，恰如时空本身，从1901年首次颁奖开始就呈不断上升的曲线。

But data compiled by researchers at the University of Florence, Aalto University in Finland and the University of Belgrade suggest that this “prize delay” now routinely spans decades.

但根据佛罗伦萨大学、芬兰阿尔托大学和贝尔格莱德大学研究员的数据，“延迟获奖”的情况常常跨越几十年。

In physics, over the past century the average gap between achievement and award has increased from ten years to more than 30. Fifteen of the longest 20 have come in the past two decades. These include British scientist Peter Higgs (2013) who won 49 years after predicting the existence of the boson that bears his name, and Nambu Yoichiro (2008), a Japanese scientist, who became a laureate 48 years after his work on spontaneous symmetry-breaking.

拿物理学奖来说，过去一个世纪中，科学成就与获奖之间的跨度从十年增长到三十多年。20名等待时间最长的获奖者中，有15名在过去20年获奖。其中包括：英国科学家彼得·希格斯（2013），在他预测了玻色子存在的49年后获奖，该粒子以他命名；日本科学家南部阳一郎（2008）在他研究自发对称性破缺的48年后获奖。

In chemistry, the average delay has roughly doubled in the past 100 years. In medicine, the same trend is evident. This year’s prize went to three scientists involved in identifying the hepatitis C virus in 1989.

在化学奖上，平均等待期在过去100年中几乎翻了一番。医学奖方面，等待期也有明显的增长趋势。今年的医学奖授予了三位科学家，他们在1989年发现了丙型肝炎病毒。

There are many theories about why the lag is growing. Increased life expectancy may play a part—a Nobel science prize has never been awarded posthumously. Scientific progress may also be slowing, forcing the awards’ committees to look ever further into the past for deserving nominees. Perhaps the most convincing explanation is that Nobel prizes are awarded for discoveries, not unsupported theories, and complex ideas may take longer to prove than they did a century ago.

有许多理论解释为什么等待期在不断延长。增长的寿命或许是原因之一——诺贝尔奖不会追授给逝世的科学家。科研进展也可能在放缓，迫使诺奖委员会回溯更远的历史去寻找值得提名的人选。或许最有说服力的解释是：诺贝尔奖授予确定的科学发现，而非未经证实的理论。比起一个世纪以前，人们需要花更长的时间去证实一个复杂的理论。

After all, Sir Roger Penrose’s mathematical breakthroughs could not be confirmed empirically without technological innovations developed over decades. Whatever the reason, today’s scientists should hope that the curves start to flatten, or it is likely that their crowning moment of glory will see them with one foot in the grave.

毕竟，罗杰·彭罗斯爵士的数学理论没有几十年的科技创新发展是无法仅靠经验证实的。无论是什么原因，今天的科学家应该希望这一曲线开始变平，否则在光荣的加冕时刻，他们可能一只脚已经踏进坟墓里了。

经济学教授Tyler Cowen认为，诺贝尔奖作为全球规模最大的奖项之一，如今其含金量却越来越小。他举了如下的例子：

A Nobel Prize is worth less each year. What’s more, these awards no longer generate much interest or suspense. The prize was first awarded only in 1969, so by the late 1970s the core of winners included  the greatest economists of the 20th century, along with John Maynard Keynes, who died in 1946. The more recent winners have all been excellent and deserving choices. But they do not have the historical import of those earlier figures. And as the number of winners grows, the prize feels less special.

诺贝尔奖的含金量历年不断下降。人们对诺奖揭晓不再怀有兴趣或是悬疑感。在70年代晚期之前，经济学奖核心获奖人物只有几人，但他们代表了20世纪最伟大的经济学家群体，还有于1946年逝世的宏观经济学之父凯恩斯。虽然近年来获奖者都很优秀，但是他们的贡献并没有早期人物有价值，同时随着获奖者人数的增长，奖项愈发显得不那么特别了。

除了获奖者的贡献与数量，活跃的社交媒体互动也在削弱诺贝尔奖的神秘感。

I follow three Nobel laureates active on Twitter. Each seems more temperamental than the 20-somethings in my feed. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as perhaps it boosts their impact or their reach. Still, over time it diminishes the luster of having a Nobel, and all the laureates suffer from that effect.

我在推特上关注了三个很活跃的诺奖得主，他们看上去都比我心目中20岁出头的年轻人更容易兴奋。虽然在社交媒体上活跃有助于加强影响力，并不一定是坏事，但长此以往，它会让诺贝尔奖得主的光辉消散，甚至波及到其他诺奖得主。

That’s the thing with social media — it confers a lot of attention on negative outliers. Michael Levitt of Stanford, for example, who won the prize in chemistry in 2013, has been a frequent tweeter about the pandemic. While he has made valuable contrarian points about fall-offs in the rate of excess deaths and other matters, he can be sloppy with data and has made ill-advised and inaccurate predictions about various national pandemics being “over.”

这就是社交媒体的锅——它过于关注负面而异常的信息。以在2013年诺贝尔化学奖得主迈克尔·莱维特为例，他在疫情方面发表了很多推文。虽然他在死亡率的回落等问题上提出了颇有建树的反面意见，但由于他在数据处理上不够谨慎，在各种全国性的流行病 "结束 "问题上做出了不明智且不准确的预测。

The internet diminishes the impact of the prize in yet another way. Take Paul Romer, a highly deserving laureate in economics in 2018. To his credit, many of Romer’s ideas, such as charter cities, had been debated actively on the internet, in blogs and on Twitter and Medium, for at least a decade. Just about everyone who follows such things expected that Romer would win a Nobel Prize, and when he did it felt anticlimactic.

而网络也会以另一种方式减弱奖项的影响力。保罗•罗默，当之无愧的2018年诺贝尔经济学奖得主，值得称道的是，他的许多想法在网上受到了积极的讨论，时间长达十年，如宪章城市。几乎所有关注者都希望他能获奖，可当他最终获此殊荣后，人们却感到有点兴趣索然。

And how many people care about the literature prize these days? This year’s winner, Louise Glück, is a fine poet, but the news made page A21 of the New York Times. The top-selling book of last year’s winner, Peter Handke, has a rank of somewhere around 100,000 on Amazon as of this writing. The selection of Bob Dylan in 2016 was a short-lived attempt to make that prize feel more relevant, but Dylan didn’t bother to show up for the awards ceremony, perhaps realizing that he is bigger than the prize itself.

那么多少人关注了最近的诺贝尔文学奖呢？今年的赢家露易丝·格丽克是一个优秀的诗人，但她获诺奖的新闻只上了纽约时报的A21版。而去年文学奖得主彼得·汉德克最畅销的书在亚马逊上也只有10万条左右的评分。鲍勃·迪伦获奖是一次多元化的短暂尝试，但他并没有亲自领奖，或许是意识到他本人比奖项更重要。

The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to the World Food Programme, part of the United Nations. Yet the Center for Global Development, a leading and highly respected think tank, ranked the winner dead last out of 40 groups as measured for effectiveness.

今年诺贝尔和平奖落入世界粮食组织之手。但是全球发展中心——一个举足轻重的智库，却把其在一个衡量有效性的排名中位置于最后一名。

The most striking feature of the award is not that the Nobel committee might have gotten it wrong. Rather, it is that nobody seems to care. The issue has popped up on Twitter, but it is hardly a major controversy.

但该奖项最令人深省的一点不在于委员会颁错了对象，而是几乎没人注意它。即使它上了推特热搜，也没有引发争议。

由此看来，诺奖含金量的减少受到了社交媒体的负作用、获奖者成就远不如前，和人们关注度下滑等多方面因素合力造成的。

数据证明一切。

Of 931 individuals and 28 organizations to have won the prize since the awards began, just 16 are Black. No Black winners were named in 2020.

自诺奖首次开奖以来，共有931名个人和28个组织获奖，其中只有16名是黑人。而今年，甚至没有黑人获奖者。

Twelve Black people have won the Peace Prize, three the Nobel Prize in Literature, and one the associated Prize in Economics awarded by Sweden's central bank in Alfred Nobel's honor. No Black recipients have ever won one of the science prizes.

在历年的获奖名单中，12名黑人获得了和平奖，3人获得了诺贝尔文学奖，1人获得了瑞典中央银行授予的阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔奖（Alfred Nobel）相关经济学奖。但没有一个黑人获科学奖。

While the number of female science winners may be slowly improving, the diversity problem is even worse when it comes to race. 

虽然女性科学获奖者的数量可能在缓慢提高，但在种族方面上看的话，多样性问题还是很严重。

"The problems start rightat the beginning in economic, schooling, bias," Marc Zimmer, a chemistry professor at Connecticut College told CNN. "

康州大学的化学教授Marc Zimmer告诉CNN：“问题从经济的根底开始的、学校教育和社会偏见。” 

"I think the problem really with the lack of racial diversity is not a problem of the Nobel awards, rather that's more a societal systemic problem."

“我认为缺乏种族多样性的问题并不是诺贝尔奖的问题，而是一个社会系统问题。”

A lack of diversity in science can lead to a lack of information about certain demographics, he added. "To do real good science we need everybody's input, not just 30, 40% of the population."

他补充说，科学缺乏多样性会导致缺乏关于某些人口统计学的信息。“想要真正做好科学研究，我们需要每个人的投入与想法，而不仅仅是30%或40%的人口。”

"The prize should reflect the world that we live in now," Matthew said."I do think that if it's a global prize that it should reflect global cultures, reading and uplifting the work of people who write in different languages, who speak to the global condition in different ways."

“诺贝尔奖应该反映我们所处的现实世界。”马修认为，“如果它是一个全球性的奖项，它应该反映全球文化，发现和提升那些用不同语言的写作、以不同方式与全球环境对话的人的作品。”