{"id":35556,"date":"2025-10-09T22:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T22:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35556"},"modified":"2025-10-13T02:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T02:23:30","slug":"nobel-prizes-this-year-offer-three-cheers-for-slow-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35556","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Prizes This Year Offer Three Cheers for Slow Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The scientific Nobels announced this week \u2014 in Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry \u2014 honored achievements rooted in fundamental research from decades ago.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

At least three different reporters on Tuesday asked John Clarke, one of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Physics laureates, how exactly we ended up with technology like the cellphone today from his obscure discovery of \u201cmacroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization\u201d 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

He never did give a straight answer. Perhaps because there isn\u2019t one, no easy throughline to draw from the lab to our everyday lives. Often that line is a culmination of expertise that outweighs the contributions of one or a few scientists; it is an idea here, a breakthrough there and many failed experiments in between, sometimes over the course of decades.<\/p>\n

The scientific Nobels announced this week underscore that point. All three awards \u2014 granted each year in physiology or medicine, physics and chemistry \u2014 honored achievements rooted in fundamental research from decades ago. Some experts interpret the selections by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as representing the importance of slow, basic science, work pursued out of a desire to better understand the world.<\/p>\n

In an age when government efficiency has been used to justify sharp cuts<\/a> to scientific funding, the science Nobels offer a case for plodding curiosity: that esoteric, seemingly useless exploration can lay the bricks for a road to places we cannot yet see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just that it took a long time between the efforts and the prize, but that the effort itself was intergenerational,\u201d said David I. Kaiser, a physicist and science historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. \u201cThey\u2019re not things for which we can have even well-formed questions, let alone clear and compelling answers\u201d within a specific time frame, he added.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded<\/a> to three scientists who uncovered why the body\u2019s immune system doesn\u2019t attack itself. One of those scientists initiated experiments in the 1980s that did not bear significant fruit until 1995, and the other two laureates carried on that research through the early 2000s. <\/strong>The knowledge they revealed has led to developments in cancer treatment and has become a foundation for more than 200 ongoing clinical trials.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The scientific Nobels announced this week \u2014 in Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry \u2014 honored achievements rooted in fundamental research from decades ago.At least three different reporters on Tuesday asked John Clarke, one of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Physics laureates, how exactly we ended up with technology like the cellphone today from his obscure discovery of \u201cmacroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization\u201d 40 years ago.He never did give a straight answer. Perhaps because there isn\u2019t one, no easy throughline to draw from the lab to our everyday lives. Often that line is a culmination of expertise that outweighs the contributions of one or a few scientists; it is an idea here, a breakthrough there and many failed experiments in between, sometimes over the course of decades.The scientific Nobels announced this week underscore that point. All three awards \u2014 granted each year in physiology or medicine, physics and chemistry \u2014 honored achievements rooted in fundamental research from decades ago. Some experts interpret the selections by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as representing the importance of slow, basic science, work pursued out of a desire to better understand the world.In an age when government efficiency has been used to justify sharp cuts to scientific funding, the science Nobels offer a case for plodding curiosity: that esoteric, seemingly useless exploration can lay the bricks for a road to places we cannot yet see.\u201cIt\u2019s not just that it took a long time between the efforts and the prize, but that the effort itself was intergenerational,\u201d said David I. Kaiser, a physicist and science historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. \u201cThey\u2019re not things for which we can have even well-formed questions, let alone clear and compelling answers\u201d within a specific time frame, he added.On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists who uncovered why the body\u2019s immune system doesn\u2019t attack itself. One of those scientists initiated experiments in the 1980s that did not bear significant fruit until 1995, and the other two laureates carried on that research through the early 2000s. The knowledge they revealed has led to developments in cancer treatment and has become a foundation for more than 200 ongoing clinical trials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35558,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35559,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35556\/revisions\/35559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}