玩转诺贝尔奖的十条军规

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毫无疑问，在追求诺贝尔奖的路上，有太多的人们。他们有的是年轻科学家、作家、学生，甚至是高级科学家。一个“诺贝尔奖”可以说存在着太多的诱惑。而对于像我们这样的国家，这么多年来在理科科学领域还没有自己培养的本土诺贝尔奖获得者，因而“诺贝尔奖”这个名词还掺杂着民族主义、政治等诸多因素。不管怎样的背景，诺贝尔奖都是一个科学家的最大荣誉。为了获得这样的光环，更是让很多人趋之若鹜。因此，很多人都觉得，一定有着怎样的规则或者途径，通过规划自己的学术生涯，最终能够到达瑞典皇家科学院的领奖台。那么有没有这样的秘密武器或者捷径呢？

2015年7月17, 英国科学家Richard John Roberts作为1993的诺贝尔奖获得者给出了他的看法。Roberts和 Phillip Allen Sharp因为在真核生物的基因内含子以及基因剪切领域的开创性工作共享了1993年的诺贝尔生理学或医学奖获。他认为，最最重要的就是，“不要一开始就把目标定成获得诺贝尔奖。”，并作为他认为的“获得诺贝尔奖的十条简单法则”的第一条，也是最重要的一条。

英国科学家、诺贝尔奖获得者Richard John Roberts

那么想要获得诺贝尔奖（这里文学奖和和平奖不在讨论范围）究竟有哪十条简单的法则呢？我们来听听诺贝尔奖得主Richard John Roberts的看法。

第一条：不要在学术生涯开始之时就瞄准诺贝尔奖

这“诺贝尔大法”，开篇第一条就是“不要期望，想都不要想”自己会获得诺贝尔奖。如果你能够做自己能力范围内最好的科研、提出好的问题、努力解答、寻求那些“奇怪的”结果，因为说不定就打开了新世界的大门。如果运气好，能够搞个“大新闻”，说不定还能得一两个奖。再如果，运气特别好，那么你说不定还有那么点机会得到诺贝尔奖。不过，Roberts认为，运气这种事，哎~你也懂的。

第二条：还是多祈祷你的实验会常常失败吧

大体上，实验失败无外乎两种主要原因。第一种就是，你搞砸了哪里。如果不是最初就没有仔细想好怎么做实验，那就是你混合试剂出了问题，或者标记没有做好，再要不就是仪器不准。对于这种失败原因，没有其他办法，你还是再重复吧，直到成功为止。有意思的是，还有时候，你想得到的结果，或许真的不存在，真实情况可能完全是另一回事。这时候，如果足够幸运，你会去想是不是之前的常识出来问题，那么怎么检测之前的“定理”不对呢？运气再好一点，能够证明确实是之前的理论错了，那么说不定就离诺贝尔奖近了一步。

第三条：需要合作，但是合作者不要超过两个人

合作有时候不仅对实验有好处，而且也是很好玩的事情。结合不同专家的智慧，说不定真能有个大发现。为啥合作者不能超过两个呢？那就是，通往诺贝尔奖的船上，只能挤得下三个人，因为诺奖得主最多就三个人。那么另外两个合作者可得好好挑选了。人多了，说不定一些潜在的合作者成为了竞争者，那就得不偿失了。

第四条：想要增加机会，那么选择你的家庭就得留意了

至今，共用7位诺贝尔奖得主的孩子（或者后代）也获得了诺奖，四对夫妻一起获得了诺奖。例如，居里夫人和丈夫皮埃尔获得了1903年的诺贝尔物理学奖，而他们的女儿女婿获得了1935年的诺贝尔化学奖。在这113年间，科学领域共有586名获得者，这些年间，而地球上有着超过100亿的人口。那就可见家庭对增加诺奖获得几率还是很重要的。

第五条：在一个曾经走出过诺奖得主的实验室工作

很多诺贝尔奖得主都受益于这条法则。例如英国剑桥大学的医学研究委员会实验室，其中走出过不少于9位诺奖得主。这其中更有科学界的大牛弗莱德桑格尔（Fred Sanger），他因为蛋白质氨基酸测序和DNA测序获得两次诺贝尔化学奖（1958和1980年）。实际上，在这其中，他还发明了RNA的测序法，但是并没有因此获得诺贝尔奖。看来，瑞典皇家科学院的诺贝尔奖评审委员会没有发三个奖章给一个人的胃口。

第六条：比第五条还有用的是，在一个将会获得诺奖的实验室工作

这个非常有用。如果能够进入那样的实验室，而且参与了重大发现，这是将非常有益。能够找到一个很有潜力的黑马，并且能够搞出大发现，同时你的老板还愿意同你共享诺奖的荣耀，那么就要恭喜你了。然而，不用想也知道，这很难。你还需要确定，重大发现是在你离开实验室之前就会出现，要不然就亏大了。

第七条：运气正好的时候要一鼓作气

很快，一个非正式的调查就会给出这样的结论：运气，是获得诺奖的最大因素。可能的原因是，当我们认为公认的理论是对的，然而结果被证明是错的，而我们还坚持继续基于这个公认的理论进行实验。如果我们能够足够幸运，果断抛弃这种公认的理论，那么很可能我们就将迎来重大发现了。然而，这种转变不仅需要勇气，更需要运气。

第八条：诺奖不应该成为生活的中心

一切以诺奖为中心，这一点被太多人证明简直是灾难性的错误。很多人确信自己即将获得诺奖了，于是他们就开始筹划自己的得奖感言，开始计划着四处游学讲述自己的成就。这还不如不知道被提名了，然后在一个早晨接到来自斯德哥尔摩的电话，这将是多么大的惊喜。而实际上很多人做的更是出格，他们每年年底寄给诺奖委员会自己的文章，作为对委员会的提醒，来表示自己取得了多大发现。这种人是肯定不会被提名的。你可以想象，那些评审人们晚上在酒吧里，谈到这样的人会笑成什么样子。

第九条：最好对所有瑞典科学家们好一点

有些诺奖得主会因为选错了对手，本应该得到的奖却被严重推迟了。因为谁也不会知道，你所挑战的人是不是已经进入了诺奖的评审委员会，或者你们干一架之后他就成了委员会成员。Peyton Rous就是很好的例子，他从1911年等到了1966年，等了半个世纪，在死前四年终于得到了诺奖。

相对来说，这一条太容易了，Roberts就认为大多数的瑞典科学家都是和蔼可亲、非常好相处的人，而且和很有合作精神，尤其是，他们很多人都可以成为很好的酒桌上的知己。所以，从现在开始还来得及，对所有瑞典科学家们都要好一点。

第十条：学生物，错不了

为啥学生物？那原因太多了。首先，生物很有趣，与日常生活相关，而且还有太多没用弄清楚。相对于其他领域，生物领域得诺奖的几率会大很多。生物包括了太多内容，很容易一不小心就进入全新的世界，新的交叉学科，这会非常有意思。再次，生物不像物理化学亘古不变，生物总在进化，昨天的真理，今天或许就不适用了。最后，生物相关的诺奖有两种，那就是诺贝尔化学奖，以及诺贝尔生理学奖或医学奖，这其中一半都发给了生物学家，那么你就提高了50%的概率。

最后，Roborts总结道，第一条最重要。其他九条，可能会有点用，就算一点用也没有，也可以算是好玩的意见了。第一条很重要，第一条不应被忽视，第一条是唯一法则，重要的事情一定要说三遍。就算是大科学家如玛丽居里，或者弗莱德桑格尔，他们也遵守这第一条。如果说有例外的话，那就是美国科学家莱纳斯鲍林第二次获得诺奖没有遵守这第一条。因为，第二次得诺奖确实概率比平均概率高了不少。

（生物谷Bioon.com）

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Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize

Richard J. Roberts
New England Biolabs, Ipswich, Massachusetts, United States of America


Introduction

It is remarkable how many students, young faculty, and even senior faculty hanker after a Nobel Prize. Somehow, they think that it is possible to structure their scientific careers so that the culmination will bring this much sought-after honor. Some even think that as a Nobel laureate myself, I may have the key to success—some secrets that I can share and so greatly improve their odds of success. Unfortunately, I must begin by disappointing everyone. There is only one path that should be followed. It is summed up in Rule 1, but some of the other Rules may prove helpful—or if not helpful, then at least amusing.

1. Never Start Your Career by Aiming for a Nobel Prize

Don’t even hope for it or think about it. Just focus on doing the very best science that you can. Ask good questions, use innovative methods to answer them, and look for those unexpected results that may reveal some unexpected aspect of nature. If you are successful in your research career, then you will make lots of discoveries and have a very happy life. If you are lucky, you will make a big discovery that may even bag you a prize or two. But only if you are extraordinarily lucky will you stand any chance of winning a Nobel Prize. They are very elusive.

2. Hope That Your Experiments Fail Occasionally

There are usually two main reasons why experiments fail. Very often, it is because you screwed up in the design by not thinking hard enough about it ahead of time. Perhaps more often, it is because you were not careful enough in mixing the reagents (I always ask students if they spat in the tube or, more recently, were texting when they were labeling their tubes). Sometimes, you are not careful enough in performing the analytics (did you put the thermometer in upside down, as I once witnessed from a medical student whose name now appears on my list of doctors who I won’t allow to treat me even if I’m dying?). These problems are the easiest to deal with by always taking great care in designing and executing experiments. If they still fail, then do them over again! But the more interesting reason that experiments fail is because nature is trying to tell you that the axioms on which you based the experiment are wrong. This means the dogma in the field is wrong (often the case with dogma). If you are lucky, as I was, then the dogma will be seriously wrong, and you can design more experiments to find out why. If you are really lucky, then you will stumble onto something big enough to be prizeworthy.

3. Collaborate with Other Scientists, but Never with More Than Two Other People

Collaboration embodies much of what is good about science and makes it fun. By bringing different sets of expertise to bear on a problem, it is often the key to making discoveries. However, if you think you are getting close to a big discovery, always keep in the back of your mind that there can only be three winners on the ticket for a Nobel Prize. Pick your collaborators carefully! But seriously, don’t do as some have done and try to make a competitor of someone who would otherwise be an extremely valuable collaborator.

4. To Increase Your Odds of Winning, Be Sure to Pick Your Family Carefully

Seven children of Nobel Prize winners have gone on to win the Prize themselves, and four married couples have jointly won the Prize. Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, won in Physics in 1903, while their daughter Irene with her husband, Frederic Joliot, won the Chemistry Prize in 1935. Carl and Gerty Cori won the Medicine Prize in 1947, and Alva Myrdal and Alfonso Robles won the Peace Prize in 1942. Lawrence Bragg shared the Physics Prize in 1935 with his father, William. Roger Kornberg (Chemistry, 2006) and his father, Arthur, (Medicine, 1959) both won. Aage Bohr (1975) and his father, Niels, (1922) both won the Physics Prize. Other father-son laureates are the Swedes Hans von Euler-Chelpin (Chemistry, 1929) and Ulf von Euler (Medicine, 1970) and Manne Siegbahn (1924) and Kai Siegbahn (1981), both in Physics. Briton Joseph John Thomson (1906) and his son George (1937) both won the Physics Prize. The only siblings to bask in Nobel glory were Jan and Nikolaas Tinbergen (Medicine, 1973) of the Netherlands. Jan won the first Prize awarded in Economics in 1969.

With a total of 586 Nobel Prize recipients in science during the 113 years since it was first awarded, these are impressive numbers, given a world population numbering at least 10,000,000,000 over the same period of time.

This rule is vividly illustrated last year (2014) by another married couple sharing the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

5. Work in the Laboratory of a Previous Nobel Prize Winner

Many Prize recipients have benefitted greatly from the inspiration that this approach can bring. Sometimes just working at an institution with a previous Prize winner can be helpful. One prime example is the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where no less than nine staff members have won Nobel Prizes in either Chemistry or Physiology and Medicine, including my own personal hero Fred Sanger, who won the Chemistry Prize twice (1958, 1980), once for inventing protein sequencing and once for pioneering DNA sequencing. In between, he also invented RNA sequencing, but perhaps three Prizes was more than the Nobel Committee could stomach.

6. Even Better Than Rule 5, Try to Work in the Laboratory of a Future Nobel Prize Winner

This can be very beneficial, especially if you can be a part of the Prize-winning discovery. That has proven to be a very good strategy, but it is not always easy to spot the right mentor, one who will bring you that sort of success and then share the glory with you. The corollary of this strategy is not to work in the laboratory of someone who has already won but whom you think will win again with you on the ticket. This has yet to prove successful based on the previous double recipients named in Rule 5! It is much better to make sure that any big discoveries come from you after you leave the lab and are out on your own.

7. Always Design and Execute Your Best Experiments at a Time When Your Luck Is Running High

A casual survey of Nobel Prize winners will soon confirm that most credit luck as being the biggest component in their discovery. This is partly because many discoveries arise when what we think we know turns out to be wrong and we base our further research on incorrect assumptions. However, only rarely are we lucky enough to have to make such dramatic changes in our assumptions that a really major breakthrough becomes possible—the sort that may one day be considered appropriate for a Nobel Prize.

8. Never Plan Your Life around Winning a Nobel Prize

This has proven disastrous for many people. I know several scientists who became convinced that they were going to win and had all sorts of plans for less-than-modest speeches acknowledging the award of the Prize, preparing comments for journalists and planning subsequent trips to exotic places to talk about their discovery. It is far better not to know you have been nominated so that it comes as a real surprise when you get the early morning call from Stockholm. In fact, why not just forget about the Nobel Prize altogether and focus on doing the very best science you can? If you decide to ignore this rule, under no circumstances should you bug current Nobel laureates to nominate you. This has been an all-too-common strategy employed by many who feel they should be laureates, some even going so far as to send their last year’s publications along every year with a reminder of what they consider their “big” discovery. This will almost guarantee that the laureate won’t nominate you and is likely to lead to them advising their friends similarly. Can you imagine how that conversation would go after a few late-night drinks in the bar?

9. Always Be Nice to Swedish Scientists

Several laureates had their prize severely delayed by picking a fight with the wrong person, someone who was either already a Nobel Committee member or became one subsequent to the fight. Some individuals may even have lost out altogether, although one would need to search the archives (only available 50 years after the award) to find them. This is usually an easy rule to follow as in my experience the Swedes are very nice people, good scientists, easy to collaborate with, and extremely amiable drinking partners.

[size=0.8125]It is never too early to get started on this. Then, should your name magically appear on the candidates’ list and you have to wait for it to reach the top, you may still be around to cash in. Peyton Rous had to wait from 1911 until 1966 for the Medicine Prize, just four years before his death.

10. Study Biology

There are many reasons for this. First, biology is fascinating, never boring, and directly affects our everyday lives, yet we still know relatively little about it. Thus, the odds of making a big discovery are greatly increased compared to other disciplines. Second, biology is all around us, is vastly complicated, and encompasses disciplines such as medicine, agriculture, conservation, and computer science, as well as many others, thus lending itself to the kind of interdisciplinary approaches that make science such fun and can easily lead into new territory. Third, unlike physics and chemistry, biology is ever changing, thanks to evolution. What seems to be the rule today may have changed by the time you are doing your experiments. Finally, there are two Prize categories in which biological discoveries are currently being awarded. One is Physiology or Medicine, and the other is Chemistry, in which about half the Prizes go to biologists. Already you have increased your odds by 50%.

Conclusions

In summary, Rule 1 is the best advice I can offer. There is no substitute for pursuing the very best science that you can. Even Marie Curie, John Bardeen, and Fred Sanger needed this to win their second Prize. In contrast, Linus Pauling, one of the cleverest chemists of his generation, only received his second Prize (in Peace) by working in a totally different field. Nevertheless, the odds of winning a second Prize, if you already have one, do seem rather better than average!

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004084