'Roster' Ranks 116 Science Prizes

Not all awards are created equal. That's why the International Congress of Distinguished Awards (ICDA), a Philadelphia-based organization, published the Official Roster of Distinguished Awards, a directory of 116 prizes that the ICDA considered the best of their kind. It gave those awards its seal of approval based on uniqueness to a particular field, amount of cash prize, and professionalism of administration. (See www.icda.org .) Keeping up with awards is difficult, because most of the approximately 29,000 awards in existence have been created in the last 20 years. In addition, the world of awards has its own culture, quirks, and trends. Perhaps the biggest is the tendency for a relatively small group of scientists to collect multiple awards. As a companion to the roster, the organization next plans to document that trend by compiling a "Who's Who?" of distinguished awards. Larry E. Tise, ICDA president, a long-time observer of the world of awards, is also a frequent participant in it. The former executive director of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute created, promoted, and expanded many of that institution's awards. He also has sat in on countless selection committee meetings, and he fields calls from a steady stream of people and institutions creating new awards. Tise shared his insider's view with news editor Paul Smaglik. An account edited for space and clarity follows. Q: Has award creation been especially high in the life sciences? A: In the life sciences it's very different. There are a lot of new awards for technology. But people seem to be confident that they can evaluate new developments in technology. With the physical sciences, it seems that it takes a period of 20 years or so for experts to understand whether contributions to the physical sciences are for real. When it comes to the life sciences, it is all over the place. I would say the most common period for recognizing the life sciences is 10-20 years. The confidence level of recognizing a real achievement is very hard. I've sat in on many, many panels of people choosing recipients for awards, and the tendency is always to go with the recognized expert from back there, as opposed to something that happened last year. Q: How do these panels work? Do you think the selection process is fairly uniform and systematic from board to board? A: There is a tremendous tendency to verify by other awards. Once somebody gets an award, there's a tendency for committees to say, "Oh yeah, well he got the so-and-so, so we can be sure he's important." There are certain institutions that are very, very good at promoting their scientists or their faculty. In the world of awards, people who get awards tend to be at institutions that do a good job of nominating. I don't think this is a negative. The world of awards is a world of business. The universities that do a really good job of promoting their faculty people have professional award writers. All they do is write award nominations. If you sit on committees for various awards, you see the same nominations over and over. Q: So how does one win a first award? A: There is a procedure. Get someone who is not at your university who is recognized in a field to write a nomination. If you get a nomination from James Watson or Francis Crick, it immediately goes to the top of the pile. If you get a nomination from a Nobel laureate--somebody really known--that's a real plus. If you get a nomination from someone in your own university, that's a definite minus. If you get a nomination in which all of the reference letters are completely different, completely genuine, that is a definite plus. It is also very important--and I say this humorously--to make sure that somebody proofreads the nomination, to make sure that if it is a nomination for the Tyler Prize that someone doesn't say somewhere in there, "We trust that the Nobel committee will ...." That happens all the time. It is important for nominators and reference people to talk about the person. There are certain words that, if you read them, you assume that the applicant doesn't know what they're talking about, that the nominee's finding is important because it's important because it's important. It's also important in nominations to have people who are outside of your field. There was a nomination that I recently reviewed that had five supporting letters, and they were from five different universities. I did a little checking and very quickly figured out that all five of the supporting letters were from students of the person who was being nominated. Larry E. Tise, president of the International Congress of Distinguished Awards, next to a sitting statue of Benjamin Franklin. Q: How aware of their legacies are these committees? A: They are so careful and so conservative. It's very interesting to me that in the period from the 1930s to 1960 or so, Nobel Prizes in physics were given for achievements in the last year--even in the last six months. But now, if you look at Nobel Prizes in physics, they are almost always for achievements 20 years back. So there is a real conservative appraisal of these things. It's the same in the life sciences. Q: Has the Nobel committee switched its emphasis on its reason for bestowing awards? A: The committee members have moved from being innovators to being validators. It's very interesting. That is not so with the peace prize. But in regard to almost all the other awards, they are very conservative. Q: Is it detrimental to science to have the same individuals repeatedly honored? A: I used to think it was a bad thing for award groups to recognize the same people over and over. One of the reasons I wanted to do this "Who's Who" was to expose how much "me-tooism" there is. But I've changed my mind completely in thinking that the more awards a person receives, the more it is a validation of the importance of their contribution. Q: What about the perceived or real lack of female recipients? A: That's changing dramatically. That's no longer the case. I work with the Lawrence Award program with the U.S. Department of Energy. That program gives seven awards every year for energy research, and three or four of them are to women. And they're great accomplishments. It's not a fake thing. I would say that 10 years ago, that was a serious problem, but it's not so much any more--or it's less of a problem, because there is a generation of women in their 30s and 40s who are doing great work. I think there's a whole generation that's ripening now. Q: Why does someone launch an award? Is there some sense of the need to keep a family or company name alive? A: I was at the Franklin Institute and set up the Bower Award--a $250,000 cash prize for achievement in science. And that was a case in which the person who gave the money to set up the award did this for the sole purpose of perpetuating the name. The guy who left the money, Henry Bower, left it in honor of his grandfather, whose name was also Henry Bower. And then there is the Welch Prize in chemistry, in which there was a guy who also made a lot of money and wanted to encourage great achievements in chemistry. I don't even think he said it should be called the Welch Prize. Q: What drives corporations to present awards? A: Corporations tend to be completely schizophrenic about awards. If they want to promote the corporate name, they tend to give the awards directly from the corporation. If they are interested in promoting a cause, they tend to set up a corporate foundation and separate the corporation from the giving of the award. If they are really interested in an objective assessment of achievements, they tend to give their money to professional associations. Q: What do people do with the prize money--especially when they are repeat winners? A: Frequently, recipients will plow the money into their research or into their institution. But I remember very well one recipient who got $350,000. I asked him what he was going to do with the money. He said he needed a bigger boat. It varies quite a bit. But I find that most award recipients are pretty inspired by the recognition, and they think very carefully about what to do with the money. One of the most interesting ones that I remember is Denis Burkitt. When I was at the Franklin Institute, we gave him the Bower Award. I think he was about 80 years old. It was for coming up with a cure for this cancer, Burkitt's lymphoma. I think it is still the only cancer for which there is a definite cure. We gave Burkitt the award for about $350,000. We went back and forth before the award was actually given. He wanted to know whether we were going to pay in dollars or pounds; he was British. And he wanted to know whether he had to pay taxes on it. He wanted to know whether he had to pay American taxes on it. He was concerned with what taxes he had to pay in the U.K. He was involved with this international missionary organization. We thought he was going to give it to this organization, after taxes. So finally, just when we were about to give him the prize, he said he wanted three checks in equal amounts to go to each of his daughters. I think it may have been in pounds. Q: What are some examples of awards that have validated controversial research? A: I'd like to mention two people in specific, who have been incredible inspirations to me. One is Sherwood Rowland, who is the most acknowledged person with the research behind the ozone layer and global warming. He has received numerous awards. His purpose for seeking awards, or being nominated for awards, was to validate what he was doing in terms of atmospheric research, because he was being characterized as a jerk, as a lunatic. He spoke to our group when we met in Los Angeles two years ago and almost came to tears about how important these awards were to him in terms of him getting his message out. The other person who I would mention who is almost identical is Herbert Needleman, an M.D. at the University of Pittsburgh. He did the research on the effects of lead poisoning on small children through the ingestion of paint particles, and also on lead poisoning in the atmosphere from gasoline. He did his research and concluded that lead ingested by children between the ages of 2 and 3 did irreparable damage to their brains. So he carried this campaign to get lead out of paint, lead out of gasoline. He was pilloried by paint companies and gasoline companies. And finally he got a couple of awards--the most important being the Heinz Prize--that validated his work and led to the elimination of lead from paint and gasoline. Paul Smaglik can be contacted at psmaglik@the-scientist.com.

'Roster' Ranks 116 Science Prizes

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November 1999

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