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Intellectual
The Intellectual
What kind of disease is "Nobel disease"? Why did you get it? | Source: flickr.com
Introduction Read
There are many scientific awards, but the one that attracts the most attention is Nobel Prize . Scientists received a call from Stockholm and immediately became famous all over the world and represented the peak of human intelligence. But some Nobel Prize winners sometimes fall from the "top of intelligence" to the "gulf of brainlessness", and they believe and spread some strange ideas, even pseudoscience, which is shocking. This phenomenon that occurs in some Nobel Prize winners is called "Nobel disease" or "Nobelitis" by many scientific writers and psychologists. What kind of "disease" is this and why do you get it?
Written by | Qu Lijian
Editor | Di Lihui
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Many Nobel Prize winners will be very "outrageous" on some issues, which may be beyond everyone's expectations.
However, what kind of thoughts or behaviors can be called weird? Scientific writer Michael Shermer believes that there are several criteria, such as illogical or obvious inconsistent with science; totally denied by all or almost all scientific experts; mainly or entirely based on rumors or unproven basis.
Let's look at some examples.
Pierre Curie , that is, Madame Curie 's husband (1903 Nobel Prize in Physics winner) , participated in the Semi-Consort (French: séance) . This is a kind of psychic activity (Mediumship) , which is said to communicate with the souls of dead people. He also believes that magnetic is a paranormal phenomenon of .
Baron Rayleigh (1904 Nobel Prize in Physics) discovered argon, explaining why the sky is blue, but keen on Personalism (parapsychology) , also known as Psychology , Soulology , mainly studies a series of called supernatural phenomena, such as near-death experience, reincarnation, out-of-body, retrospective retrospective of previous life, mind transmission, prophecy, Remote vision and mind power. He has also served as president of the Institute of Parapsychological Research.
Philip von Leonard, German physicist (winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics) , promotes Hitler's theory of racism and anti-Semitism, and is the leader of "Aryan physics".
Santiago Ramon-Cajar (1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner) , the father of modern neuroscience , studied parapsychology and completed a book, but unfortunately this book was ruined by the Spanish Civil War.
Alexi Carrell (winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912), supports eugenics (Eugenics, through unnatural or artificial means to improve national genetic genes, advocates manipulation and control of the evolution progress and evolution direction of a specific population) , as a Frenchman, supports Nazi racism theory, and is a "French traitor" both physical and spiritual.
Charles Robert Riche (winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1913) , keen on studying supersensory perception (Extrasensory perception, commonly known as the sixth sense) , is the proposer of the concept of spiritual (Ectopasm) .What is spiritual essence? Believers believe that the "Great Immortal" of the psychic activity will "externalize" some material like tulle. This is the physical soul, covering the participants of the activity, which is possessed by the soul, and can communicate between humans and souls.
Riche also served as the honorary president and president of the French pseudoscience organization, the International Society of Lingering School (Institut Métapsychique International). He is also an active member of the French Eugenic Society and advocates sterilizing people with intellectual disabilities.
Figure 1 The believers of spiritual essence believe that the "big immortal" "externalizes" and "spiritual essence" through the mouth and possesses it on a person. In practice, the spirit is generally a mixture of egg white or starch and paper or cloth | Source: flickr.com
Wolfgang Pauli (1945 Nobel Prize in Physics) . He and psychologist Carl Jung proposed the concept of synchronicity (also translated as simultaneousness and synchronization) . This concept says that some events that appear to have non-causal and meaningful connections, which lies in the connection between the mind and matter. For example, it is not a coincidence that Cao Cao came to Cao Cao, but it is related to the speaker's mind.
Pauli also proposed that it is not enough to understand nature purely by logic and experiments. There will be an image in the human mind before it exists. This image must be matched with the external world, which is the basis for understanding nature.
Linas Pauling was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. In 1941, he suffered from nephritis and , and the doctor asked him to take a salt-free low-protein diet and take vitamin supplements. Fortunately, Pauling 's condition was controlled. Unfortunately, he later believed that everything was due to vitamins, so he began to take a lot of vitamin C every day.
Pauling said that taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C a day reduces the probability of catching a cold by 45%. Pauling himself takes 12,000 mg of vitamin C a day. If he catches a cold, the dose will increase to 40,000 mg a day, while the doctor recommends that the dose is only 75 to 90 mg a day.
Pauling also said that taking vitamin C in large quantities can cure cancer and at least prolong the lifespan of cancer patients. He also worked with a psychiatrist to conduct clinical trials on vitamin C for cancer, allowing patients to take 10,000 mg a day. They believe that vitamin C is effective, but medical professionals believe that their control group is unreasonable. This result was later denied by more clinical trials, but Pauling disagreed with it.
991, Pauling suffered from prostate cancer and rectal cancer. In addition to two surgeries, he refused to receive other standard treatments, but instead practiced his own vitamin therapy. Three years later, he died at the age of 93. If you don’t treat it privately, will you live a few more years?
After Pauling's death, there are still people in the academic community publishing clinical trial articles on vitamins for cancer. However, a 2009 review article (Anticancer Research. 29 (3): 809–15.) and 2015 clinical trial paper (The Oncologist. 20 (2): 210–223.) both negated Pauling's obsession.
Pauling has published many works on the efficacy of vitamins. Although it is denied by the scientific community, some works are still being published.
William Shockley was the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. He held the idea at a young age that people with intellectual advantages should be rewarded in terms of authority and influence.
Shockley was working in Bell Labs , and recruiting employees had to test their IQ, so it was criticized. However, Shockley himself scored no better than other colleagues in the Bell Labs IQ test.
After he joined Stanford University , he gradually became interested in Genetics and often expressed extreme racist views. He said that serious inadequacy in black intelligence must have been mainly genetic and therefore not relatively remedy through tangible environmental improvements. He urged the American Academy of Sciences to show responsibility and courage to conduct research on the correlation between race and intelligence.
Shockley also has extreme eugenic views. He believes that the birth rate of black people is much higher than that of white people, which will lead to a decrease in the total IQ of human beings. Black people should be given money and rewarded for sterilization. In order to improve human IQ, Shockley has done his best to improve his human IQ and donate sperm (Repository for German Choice) .
The founder of this sperm bank recruited Nobel Prize winners to donate sperm, but in the end only one Nobel Prize winner was recruited.
Figure 2 Some of James Dewey Watson's remarks often cause controversy | Source: Wikipedia
James Dewey Watson (winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) is one of the famous discoverers of DNA double helix structure. He repeatedly claimed that black people's intelligence is not as good as white people at the genetic level, so Africa has no future, which coincides with Shockley's view. He also said that "women with poor appearance" and "stupid people" should undergo genetic engineering treatment. (See the 2019 article of "Intellectuals": Watson is causing trouble again due to racial discriminatory remarks, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced a break with it)
Watson assumed in an academic report that sunbathing can increase sexual impulse, British people are sexually frigid due to the cold climate, and Muslim women's black veil cover will lead to sexual repression.
Julian Seymour Schwenger (1965 Nobel Prize in Physics), researching cold fusion , and related papers have been rejected by the American Physics Society for many times. He claimed that his research was suppressed by the academic community and that academic freedom was damaged.
Ivar Jaever (1973 Nobel Prize winner in Physics) Unreasonable doubts Global Warming , and at the 2015 Lindao Nobel Prize Conference, said global warming is not a scientific problem, but a new religion.
Bryan Josephson was the winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the late 1960s, he became interested in the philosophy of mind (philosophy of mind, also known as philosophy of mind, spiritual philosophy, etc., which is a major branch of philosophy, studying the existence and essence of the mind and its relationship with the body) , especially the problem of mind and matter (Mind–body problem, also translated as mental and physical problems, a traditional philosophical problem, discussing the relationship between mind and matter, and exploring how the mind interacts with the external world through the body and influences each other) , and believes that some superpsychological phenomena, such as telepathy, mind power (psychokinesis, affects the movement laws of objective things through a certain special consciousness of the human brain) , etc., are real. After
won the Nobel Prize, it was more convenient for Josephson to do these unorthodox research. He delivered speeches at various academic conferences and published his related research "achievements". He also formed a group with some like-minded scholars to conduct related research, using the concepts of Bell's theorem in quantum physics , quantum entanglement and other absurd things such as over-distance , super-perception (such as mind perspective, mind unpredictability, mind clairvoyance, telepathy) and other absurd things.
Josephson believes that nature is intellectual. He initiated the Mind-Matter Unification Project in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University, , specializing in research in this area.
Josephson also stubbornly supports experiments that have been confirmed to be unrepeatable, such as cold fusion and water have memory, that is, water will "remember" the dissolved solute, and after that, even after a large amount of serial dilution, it still has a memory effect.
Nicolas Timberhen, an animal behaviorist in Dutch animal behaviorist, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, used Animal Behavior technology to study infant autism, and believed that the cause of autism is caused by insufficient skin contact between the child and his mother. He made this view based on speculation rather than evidence, and the evidence accumulated at the time showed that autism was a genetic disease or a neurological disease. He also proposed a hug therapy for autism (Holding therapy) , where the mother holds the child for a long time and makes eye contact with the child. Research believes that Timberhen's view is unfounded and embracing therapy is not only ineffective, but is harmful.
Arthur Shaulo (winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981) 's child unfortunately suffered from autism and received physical assisted communication (Facilitated communication, FC) therapy. In this therapy, the helper uses his hands to pull or hold the patient's hand, wrist, elbow, arms, shoulders or sleeves, and even pulls with a rope, so that the patient can use his index finger to select items, card, letters on the keyboard, etc. to communicate with others. The scientific community believes that this therapy is ineffective, but the Sholos believe that it is effective for their children and enthusiastically promotes it.
Figure 3 An autistic patient is receiving physical assisted communication therapy | Source: skepticalinquirer.org
Kelly Mullis (1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) In his autobiography published in 1998, "Naked Dance of the Heart" (Dancing Naked in the Mind Field) agrees with multiple pseudoscientific views. He questioned that AIDS originated from the HIV virus and global warming, believing that these two issues were nothing more than coined by scientists, environmentalists and government agencies for their own self-interest. Ironically, his Nobel Prize-winning invention - polymerase chain reaction (Polymerase chain reaction, abbreviation: PCR) provides a solid foundation for the views he questioned. He also supports astrology, believing that the signs of a person when he is born can indeed determine a person's personality.
Richard Elite Smalley (1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) opposes Darwin evolution theory, supports creationism, and says that human beings are the master of all things.
, who just passed away in February this year (winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) published a paper in a journal sponsored by him in 2009, saying that aqueous solutions of bacteria and viral DNA can radiate electromagnetic waves . However, his paper has no experimental details, so others cannot repeat it. He also said that many neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, autism, multiple sclerosis, , etc., are caused by electromagnetic waves of DNA radiation from viruses or bacteria.
In 2010, Montanier said that he discovered the phenomenon of DNA invisible transmission and placed several test tubes in low-frequency weak electromagnetic waves. At first, there was DNA in one test tube. After 18 hours, all test tubes had exactly the same DNA. This paper is also written without giving anyone a chance to repeat.
Montanier also supports the idea that vaccines cause autism, although this view has long been denied by clinical research institutes. He also participated in a zealous boycott of vaccines.
Why does Nobel disease occur?
Psychology has not yet given a direct answer to "Nobel disease", but there are many studies on the idea that smart people will have "brain-dead" and related research can be used to understand the phenomenon of "Nobel disease".
Scientific research requires critical thinking. Can the critical thinking ability mastered through learning in one subject field be used in other fields, such as other disciplines, work, life? If it can, it is called critical thinking that has domain universality (domain-generality) . If it can't, critical thinking has domain specificity (domain-specificity) .
Intuition believes that critical thinking has domain universality, which is the value of receiving education. For example, students have learned the law of large numbers, mean regression and other knowledge, and will use this probabilistic knowledge to think about some decisions in their lives, such as postgraduate entrance examinations or employment, working or entrepreneurship.
However, psychological research has found that it is not easy to reach such a state, and it usually requires very clever teaching or learning strategies. Many people are proficient in probability knowledge, but in life they often make decisions based on simple intuition. For most people, the translational application of critical thinking ability is challenging.
However, domain specificity may be the more prominent feature of critical thinking, that is, the critical thinking ability mastered in one field is difficult to apply to other other fields.
One of the reasons is that outside of the profession, there is often no awareness of applying critical thinking, but acts on intuition like other ordinary people. Another reason is that the thinking skills required in different fields are very different and rarely overlap, and the concepts and abilities mastered in one field are difficult to apply to another. Critical thinking ability is very similar to sports skills. Success in one sports may not be possible in another. For example, Jordan , a genius basketball player, but a mediocre baseball player. Donald Glazer has achieved outstanding achievements in physics. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1960. He also made some progress in molecular biology research, but he did nothing when he entered the field of psychology.
"Nobel disease" phenomenon is a verification of the above psychological research conclusions. Even if you achieve a level of enough to win the Nobel Prize in the professional field, you may "turn aside" in other fields.
In addition, psychology research has found that general intelligence can help a person achieve great success in the professional field, but it does not help people avoid cognitive bias (cognitive bias) , because in the general life field, even smart people do not have the consciousness or motivation to deliberately apply critical thinking ability, but act on intuition.
Psychological research also shows that general intelligence is positively correlated with bias blind spot (bias blind spot) . A blind spot of bias refers to being able to identify other people’s cognitive biases, but not seeing the cognitive biases you make. In other words, when a crow falls on a pig, you can see others black, and you can’t see yourself black.
Psychology also proposes that smart people will hold weird ideas, which are often due to five "cognitive crimes", and some Nobel Prize winners will also commit them. These five sins are -
• Unrealistic optimism: I am smart, I will not be stupid.
• Egocentrism (Egocentrism): I am smart, my point of view is too right, and other people's opinions do not exist.
• omniscient (sense of omniscience): I am smart, I know everything.
• All-round (sense of omnipotence): I am smart, I can do anything.
• Don’t make mistakes (sense of invulnerability): I am smart, I am immune to all kinds of errors.
There is another phenomenon that is more prominent in particularly smart people, namely motivated reasoning (Motivated Reasoning) , that is, they will maintain their preconceived ideas in every way and ignore the opposite evidence frivolously. Psychological research has found that the smarter a person is, the better he is at defending his weird ideas.
Psychology believes that narcissistic personality is more likely to commit the aforementioned cognitive crime. Data shows that the higher the creativity, the more likely the scientists are to be conceited and narcissistic about their intelligence. However, there is no special data for Nobel Prize winners in this regard.
Science emphasizes open mind, but some scientists are too open-minded. On the one hand, they will allow scientists to do pioneering work, and on the other hand, they will also accept irrational and even weird ideas.
Some scientists have achieved breakthrough achievements. For example, after winning a dazzling medal such as the Nobel Prize, they will listen and echo anything, which will also distort their self-awareness.
Don't be "spoofed" by Nobel Prize winners
However, psychology's research on "Nobel disease" is still very broad and not detailed enough. Many conclusions are promoted from the research on cognitive biases of smart people. Most Nobel Prize winners do not suffer from "Nobel disease". Psychology has no answer to whether Nobel Prize winners are more likely to accept weird ideas than other scientists.
However, the existence of this phenomenon at least shows that cleverness and stupidity are compatible. The public must have critical thinking and skeptical thinking about the remarks of famous scientists, especially those that exceed their own professional fields. Don’t believe it just by looking at the Nobel Prize winner’s “stand”. The Nobel Prize winner is also a mortal.
References:
The main references in this article are Nobelists gone wild: Case studies in the domain specificity of critical thinking and the cited documents.
