

At $3 Million, New Award Gives Medical Researchers a Dose of Celebrity - zt
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/science/new-3-million-prizes-awarded-to-11-in-life-sciences.html?hp

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amirmc
I'm impressed and anything that promotes and furthers fundamental science gets
a thumbs-up from me.

However, I do find the process a little odd. Specific things irk me like the
ability to win multiple times and all winners also being on the selection
committee. _"Dr. Levinson [CEO of Genentech], in consultation with his
colleagues, helped Mr. Milner select the first Breakthrough winners. These
winners will form a committee that will select future winners, Mr. Milner
said,"_ I also dislike this [1], but I guess you have to start somewhere. The
Nobel Committee's aren't without controversy [2]. The prize money seems
unnecessarily large but that's an easy way to 'compete' for recognition with
more established prizes. It also helps since more research is collaborative in
nature so a split of the prize is still meaningful.

It'll be interesting to see whether these prizes succeed in putting science
more in the public eye. I'm not convinced they will unless the foundations
involved also do the extra work of marketing and promoting the winners (rather
than marketing the prize itself, as this article does).

[1] I was a research scientist so this 'industry influence' in the selection
process immediately rubbed me the wrong way (industry promoting it's own
interests etc etc). Though those feelings may not be warranted in this case.

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies>

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hirenj
In response to the comments about whether this would provide incentive to
those that would practice science, I would argue that it's probably not the
point. Rather, it rewards those who think big and encourages risk-taking, both
qualities that are not necessarily associated with the biological sciences,
where incremental success is the norm.

Quoting Milner: "With the mapping of the genome sequence there are
expectations of significant progress in the next 10 or 20 years so I think the
timing is really appropriate to create an incentive for the best scientific
minds" [1]. In other words, with a timeframe of 10-20 years, you're talking
about people already in science. To get up to this level in 10 years, you'd
have to be pretty damn brilliant.

Personally, I look at this like some icing on an already delicious cake, and
cements my commitment to a strategy to fill in some huge gaps in biological
knowledge within the next 5-10 years.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-p...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-
prize-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs)

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jahewson
Academia has managed to function just fine without this prize for a long time.
What's the sudden need for this, aren't academics supposed to be intrinsically
motivated people, rather than extrinsically motivated? I've always disliked
the Nobel prize as a concept too. Is this prize really going to cause anyone
to become an academic? If not then its just rewarding persistence and good
luck, which just re-enforces the staus quo.

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maxerickson
I don't think Milner is trying to motivate scientists, I think he is trying to
see what happens when they get a break from writing grants (which is pretty
contrary to enforcing the status quo).

The people getting these certainly have more flexibility to work on blue sky
projects.

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bpicolo
Or he wants to encourage more people to work on immortality research.

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Flenser
Do awards like this lead to more research being done? It's easy to throw large
sums of money at problems, it's harder to hand out lot's of smaller amounts. I
suspect that if this money was awarded as smaller grants to many researchers
it would have a much bigger impact.

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belorn
Wonder if this will help incentive invention, in the same way that prize money
for security vulnerability incentive security researchers to vulnerabilities
in software.

