2015 nobel prize predictions

September 9, 2015 at 1:48 pm | | nobel

Time for Nobel Prize predictions. (See my past predictions and discussions here.) My 2015 predictions:

Chemistry: CRISPR: Doudna, Charpentier [awarded in 2020]

Medicine: Immune Cancer Therapy: James Allison [awarded in 2018], Michel Sadelain

Physics: Electromagnetically Induced Transparency: Lene Hau, Steve Harris

Peace: Ebola: Médecins Sans Frontières

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  1. I already regret predicting CRISPR. Too soon. Could be supplanted by a new technique in 6 months.

    Comment by sam — September 9, 2015 #

  2. Crispr/Cas9 technology will definitely win, it’s just a matter of when. Probably too early this year, although the RNAi pathway discovery won in <10 years after it was published.

    I am not so sure that immunotherapy is a winner, even though Allison has won the Lasker and Gairdner, which statistically gives him a 30% chance of winning the nobel.

    I will be publishing my predictions this week.
    http://www.thebluecollarscholar.com

    Comment by joe — September 10, 2015 #

  3. Immune-Oncology might be awarded in the broader context of cancer targeted therapies.
    In that case, James Allison might share the prize with Charles Sawyers and Napoleone Ferrara (two other past winners of the Lasker Clinical Award and the Breakthrough Award).

    Regarding chemistry, the recent Lasker Basic Research Award to Stephen Elledge and Evelyn Witkin makes some strong candidates. Witkin is 94, so the Foundation cannot wait that long…

    CRISPR will definitely be awarded sometimes, despite the dispute with Zhang might need to be clarified.

    Comment by Valerio — September 10, 2015 #

  4. […] but there are those out there who are putting forth various predictions. See these external sites: Here, Here, and […]

    Pingback by Nobel Prize Season – The Catalyst — September 24, 2015 #

  5. Haha. Nature mentioned my flip-flop:
    http://www.nature.com/news/nobel-speculation-kicks-into-high-gear-1.18429

    Comment by sam — September 25, 2015 #

  6. Physiology or Medicine:
    1.James Allison/Evelyn Witkin/Stephen Elledge (Immune Cancer Therapy):
    Amongst their warehouse of medals, there are two Lasker Awards (the highest honour of medicine in USA), two Gairdner Foundation International Awards (the highest honour of medicine and biology in Canada), and one Breakthrough Prize (the science prize which has the highest reward), which is extremely impressive. Another reason to choose this group of scientists is that Prof. Witkin doesn’t have time to wait to get the prize since she is 94. Still, she is a woman, and that is important in the era of being politically correct.
    2.Pierre Chambon/Ronald Evans (Nuclear hormone receptor): Another group of already decorated candidates. They have gotten two Lasker Awards, two Gairdner Foundation International Awards, and one Wolf Prize (one of the second highest honour, with Shaw Prize, in multiple science disciplines after Nobel Prize). It’s a safe choice for Nobel Committee because if they really select this group, all they need to do is follow the wind vine built by other prestigious awards. Sadly, both of them are male, and it’s what inside your pants, not what inside your brain that matters more.
    3.Honjo Tasuku/Hayaishi Osamu: They can win the prize jointly or separately. Outstanding Japanese scientists are just so many. Unluckily, Prof. Tasuku’s mentor and one of Prof. Osamu’s students, Nishizuka Yasutomi passed away, or he should share the potential prize with them. One good news to them, Prof. Osamu is 95 year-old. If the committee really considers him as a strong candidate, they should give him the goddamn prize sooner than later.
    4.Emmanuelle Charpentier/Jennifer Doudna (CRISPR): Viciously exclude Zhang Feng because of the oppression from USA. Tho the members of the election committee are mostly Swedish and Norwegian, the influence of American is enormous. At the same time, this choice will make feminists achieve unprecedented orgasm. It’s the most likely choice because it will make a win-win situation for many phonies in western world. Besides, it can also be awarded in chemistry category.
    5.Nagata Shigekazu/Kazutoshi Mori/Peter Walter (Autophagy and Apoptosis): Cell pathology has become a popular research field in this decade, it helps us understand the mechanism and life cycle of cell in detail. But one negative factor, there are too many Japanese laureates in recent years, perhaps the committee will try to ‘balance’ the country distribution of all laureates.
    Physics:
    1.Yoshinori Takura/Hideo Hosono/Hideo Ohno (Iron-based superconductivity):
    One more time I wanna emphasize that there are influential Japanese scientists aplenty and tho they have already won a lot in this brand new century, I believe many of them were neglected in the past (refer Nobel Prize Controversies entity in Wikipedia) due to racial discrimination and don’t wanna see the same tragedies happen again.
    2.Stephen Harris/Lene Hau (Electromagnetically induced transparency and light stopping): There is a female scientist in this group! Yay! Anyway, their contribution points the way of quantum computing down the road, which is exciting. But this field is not mature, this is not a plus.
    3.Atsuto Suzuki/Takaaki Kajita/Arthur McDonald (Neutrino mass): As the fast development of particle physics, scientists have made a bunch of breakthrough in these years, and one of them is determining the mass of neutrino. If the two Japanese end up winning the prize, it will be a huge victory of Japanese academic training. Because Prof. Suzuki and Prof. Kajita’s doctoral mentor is Masatoshi Koshiba, another nobel laureate in physics; Prof. Koshiba’s doctoral mentor is Tomonaga Shinichiro, yet another nobel laureate in physics; Prof. Koshiba’s mentor is Yoshio Nishina, the father of Japanese physics. Plus, it’s a pure theoretical discovery, which fits the traditional taste of nobel committee.
    4.Peter Zoller/Ignacio Cirac (Quantum information theory): Pure physics again, and they both won Wolf Prize in 2013. One third of Wolf Prize laureates end up winning Nobel Prize, and most of them don’t have to wait for a long time. And in order to make up the defect that Nobel Prize doesn’t have computer science (CS) category, which has Turing Award as its highest honour, it’s safe and fashionable to give the prize to the CS related field. Plus, it can create a buzz and let our ordinary people concern more about the prize, so why don’t they do so?
    5.John Clauser/Alain Aspect/Anton Zuilinger (quantum physics, especially entangled quantum states): Quantum physics is a gargantuan field, and there are so many outstanding physicists there. Like the above group, they won Wolf Prize in 2010.
    Chemistry:
    1.Emmanuelle Charpentier/Jennifer Doudna (CRISPR): Viciously exclude Zhang
    Feng because of the oppression from USA. Tho the members of the election committee are mostly Swedish and Norwegian, the influence of American is enormous. At the same time, this choice will make feminists
    achieve unprecedented orgasm. It’s the most likely choice because it will make a win-win situation for many phonies in western world. Besides, it can also be awarded in physiology or medicine category.
    2.John Goodenough/Stanley Whittingham/Akira Yoshino (Lithium-ion battery): This technology benefits the world in recent five years tremendously. And John Goodenough is 93, if not this year, he might never win the prize. There are several negative factors to this group. First, Prof. Goodenough is not older than Evelyn Within, who is 94 (tho she is not in this category, I believe the committee won’t give prize to somebody because they are old too many times). Second, there is no woman and no minority in this group (Asians are not counted as minority because we are too smart) and people are sick of seeing this. Third, last year Physics prize went to blue LED, which is somewhat similar to lithium-ion battery… the truth is that Nobel Prize prefers breakthrough in theory over application.
    3.Krzysztof Matyjaszewski (Atom transfer radical polymerization): He has high betting ratio on ChemistryViews and is a citation laureate in Thomson Reuters’ list.
    4.Masatake Haruda/Akira Fujishima/Graham Hutchings (Catalysis by gold and Honda-Fujishima effect): Three authorities on catalytic effect. More specifically, they created the field of light and gold catalysis. This is the n- th time that I ‘prove’ the importance of Japanese scientists.
    5.Charles Kresge/Ryong Ryoo/Galen Stucky (Functional mesoporous materials): Let Korean achieve orgasm as the reward for being little brother of USA for a long time! Tho Korean likes to philander with Chinese government more and more as time goes by, they really need some placebo to comfort their vulnerable heart. By saying Korean scientists, it’s hard to forget Hwang Woo-Suk event. But let’s not mention it here.
    Economics:
    1.Kiyotaki Nobuhiro/John Moore (Kiyotaki-Moore model of credit cycle):
    Japanese never won Nobel Prize in Economics, if they can do it this year, they will complete a grand slam of Nobel Prize (collect all categories of the Nobel Prize), which only a few countries have done before. There is a saying in Chinese goes, “helping others is always a bless.” So why don’t the Nobel committee do that?
    2.Martin Feldstein/Lawrence Summers: Two John Bates Clark Medal winners, you must know that over 40% of the winners of this medal are going to win The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (nicknamed the Nobel Prize in Economics) according to statistics. Prof. Feldstein’s face can easily be seen in Business Week,
    which is quite familiar to some Taiwanese. Tho Larry Summers accidentally offended feminists in a speech many years ago, but people with talents will shine and succeed in the end, no matter what obstacles they encounter. And Larry is a genius, both on academics and practical affairs.
    3.Sir Anthony Atkinson/Angus Deaton (Income inequality, poverty and well- being): People are generally concerned with the problems they deal with, which make us not that difficult to resonate with their contribution if they are going to win the prize. And don’t be naive, the Nobel committee likes to create buzz and catches the eyeballs of media.
    4.Andrei Shleifer/Daron Acemoglu/Peter C. B. Phillips: They won’t win the prize jointly because their research field diverse. But they are the top three economists who haven’t won the Nobel Prize in Economics in the report made by RePEc (Research Paper in Economics), which is already enough to make them strong contenders.
    5.Stephen Ross (Arbitrage pricing theory): The trend is that Nobel Prize in Economics prefer theories which contain recondite mathematics more than before.
    Literature:
    1.Adunis: He is Syrian, and Syrian is the protagonist of the recent refugee issue.
    If the award really goes to him, it’s convenient for media to create huge buzz around the world. Oh and another positive factor, he is 85, quite old to be honest, if he is in the pending list of the prize, he needs to be awarded in recent year because Nobel Prize doesn’t go to dead people.
    2.Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: He is black and he lives in USA, which makes his works spread fast. Still, it has been a long while that the prize didn’t go to black writers.
    3.Haruki Murakami: The poorest sufferer of Nobel Prize in Literature, always the people’s choice, but never the committee’s favourite. Tho it seems that this year won’t be his year if the committee sticks to the tradition of rotating the countries of laureates from one continent to another year by year, his influence in Asia is quite huge (e.g. 小確幸).
    4.Svetlana Aleksijevitj: The current favorite of many betting companies, tho the ratio may change, perhaps significantly, in the future due to some leaked information came from members of the Nobel committee, just like the ratio of Alice Munro surged up the night before the prize announced in 2013, and of course she got the prize. Another good news to her, she is a woman, that is a advantage over other male competitors. Howbeit, there are many other female candidates in this category.
    5.Lydia Davis: Again, she is a woman, this fact can make all unreasonable things reasonable, all impossible things possible. She’s already won several notable awards in UK and US.
    Peace:
    1.Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): The key to stop ebola last year. The bad
    news is that it did win once in 1999.
    2.International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN): US and Syrian
    government just achieved an agreement related to regulating nuclear weapon earlier this year, that makes this year a good time to recognise this organisation’s contribution.
    3.Novaya Gazeta: A Russian gazette which is famous for its criticism and sarcasm toward Russian government. The relationship between Russia and Europe & US decayed sharply in these years. I believe those westerners won’t miss this opportunity to kick Putin’s ass.
    4.Mussie Zerai: He is temporarily the people’s choice of Paddy Power, another betting website, and his skin color is fairly deep to make his potential winning politically correct.
    5.Maggie Groban: She is the modern version of Mother Teresa, and yep, it’s ’she’, not ‘he’. More than that, she works at Egypt, which is also another hotspot in the world right now, remember Mubarak administration!?

    1.The official website of the Nobel Prize: http://www.nobelprize.org 2.Thomson Reuters Citation
    Laureates: http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/citation-
    laureates-2015
    3.Thomson Reuters People’s Choice of Citation
    Laureates: http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/citation-
    laureates-2015-poll
    4.Predictions for 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Chemistry by
    The Blue Collar Scholar: http://www.thebluecollarscholar.com 5.The economist ranking list made by RePEc (Research Paper in
    Economics): http://repec.org
    6.2015 Nobel Prize predictions by Everyday
    Scientist: https://blog.everydayscientist.com/?p=3397#comments 7. 諾貝爾獎預測的背後含義:
    http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA3NTE5MzIzMg==&mid=212867507
    &idx=2&sn=6abcf8787a7e18016a9d40bd7d9bd482&scene=0#rd 8.知乎論壇 2015年諾貝爾物理學獎預測?:
    http://www.zhihu.com/question/29738497
    9.All potential candidates information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
    10. The betting ratio in Ladbrokes: http://www.ladbrokes.com/en/home5/
    11. The betting ratio in Paddy
    Power: http://www.paddypower.com/bet/current-affairs/nobel-
    prizes?ev_oc_grp_ids=559360
    12. Who’s Next? Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 by
    ChemistryViews: http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/8322501/
    Whos_Next_Nobel_Prize_in_Chemistry_2015.html
    13. 湯姆森預測2015諾貝爾獎 許培揚 搏客:http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-
    280034-916349.html
    14. 2015年醫學和生理學諾貝爾獎花落誰手? 􏰀分子醫學:
    http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-41174-920884.html

    Comment by gcaee — September 26, 2015 #

  7. […] up in the Physiology or Medicine category eventually, but you never know. Everyday Scientist has several commenters going for this one, with James Allison being a consensus pick, along with several other candidates […]

    Pingback by Chemistry Nobel Watch 2015 | In the Pipeline — October 5, 2015 #

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