Honour discoveries, not discoverers
Winning a Nobel Prize is likely the greatest achievement to which a scientist can aspire. The path to the prize is arduous, requiring exceptional talent, dedication and insight. But there are barriers to winning that have nothing to do with scientific excellence. Instead, they arise from failings in the culture of science – a culture that the prize itself reinforces.
First of all, the Nobel laureates are almost entirely middle-aged white men based in the US or western Europe. You could argue that overwhelmingly, these scientists just happened to do the best research. But the laureates’ homogeneity doesn’t just reflect the lack of diversity among scientists – it reinforces it in a feedback loop. Seeing white men receive the award year after year implicitly indicates that only they can be rewarded for scientific achievement. This leads to systemic bias (conscious and unconscious ) against gender and racial minorities at every level of scientific practice, demoralising and driving us out of the community.