Nobel Prize Controversies - Physiology or Medicine

Physiology or Medicine

The 2011 prize was awarded in part to Ralph Steinman, who died of cancer days before the award, a fact unknown to the Nobel committee at the time of the award. Committee rules prohibit posthumous awards, and Steinman's death created a dilemma unprecedented in the history of the award. The committee ruled that Steinman remained eligible for the award despite his death, under the rule that allows awardees to receive the award who die between being named and the awards ceremony.

The 2008 prize was awarded in part to Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses (HPV) causing cervical cancer". The Swedish police anticorruption unit investigated charges of improper influence by AstraZeneca, which had a stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines. The company had agreed to sponsor Nobel Media and Nobel Web and had strong links with two senior figures in the process that chose zur Hausen.

The other half of the 2008 prize was split between Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus". The omission of Robert Gallo was controversial: 106 scientists signed a letter to the journal Science stating that 'While these awardees fully deserve the award, it is equally important to recognize the contributions of Robert C. Gallo', which 'warrant equal recognition'. Montagnier said that he was 'surprised' that the award had not been shared with Gallo.

The 2006 prize went to Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello "for their discovery of RNA interference—gene silencing by double-stranded RNA". Many of the discoveries credited by the committee to Fire and Mello, who studied RNA interference in Caenorhabditis elegans, had been previously studied by plant biologists, and was suggested that at least one plant biologist, such as David Baulcombe, should have been awarded a share of the prize.

The 2003 prize was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging" (MRI). Two independent alternatives have been alleged. Raymond Damadian first reported that NMR could distinguish in vitro between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues on the basis of different proton relaxation times. He later translated this into the first human scan. Damadian's original report prompted Lauterbur to develop NMR into the present method. Damadian took out large advertisements in an international newspapers protesting his exclusion. Some researchers felt that Damadian's work deserved at least equal credit.Separately, Herman Y. Carr both pioneered the NMR gradient technique and demonstrated rudimentary MRI imaging in the 1950s. The Nobel prize winners had almost certainly seen Carr's work, but did not cite it. Consequently, the prize committee very likely was unaware of Carr's discoveries, a situation likely abetted by Damadian's campaign.

The 2000 prize went to Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric R. Kandel, "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system". The award caused many neuroscientists to protest that Oleh Hornykiewicz, who helped pioneer the dopamine replacement treatment for Parkinson's disease, was left out, and that Hornykiewicz's research provided a foundation for the honorees' success.

The 1997 prize was awarded to Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner for his discovery of prions. This award caused a long stream of polemics. Critics attacked the validity of the work, which had been criticized by other researchers as not yet proven.

The 1993 prize went to Philip Allen Sharp and Richard J. Roberts "for their discoveries of split genes" the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene splicing. Several other scientists, such as Norman Davidson and James D. Watson, argued that Louise T. Chow, a China-born Taiwanese researcher who collaborated with Roberts, should have had part of the prize. In 1976, as Staff Investigator, Chow carried out the studies of the genomic origins and structures of adenovirus transcripts that led directly to the discovery of RNA splicing and alternative RNA processing at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island in 1977. Norman Davidson, (a Caltech expert in electron microscopy, under whom Chow apprenticed as a graduate student), affirmed that Chow operated the electron microscope through which the splicing process was observed, and was the crucial experiment's sole designer, using techniques she had developed.

The 1975 prize was awarded to David Baltimore, Renato Dulbecco and Howard Martin Temin "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell". It has been argued that Dulbecco was distantly, if at all, involved in this ground-breaking work. Further, the award failed to recognize the contributions of Satoshi Mizutani, Temin's Japanese postdoctoral fellow. Mizutani and Temin jointly discovered that the Rous sarcoma virus particle contained the enzyme reverse transcriptase. However, Mizutani was solely responsible for the original conception and design of the novel experiment that confirmed Temin's provirus hypothesis. A second controversy implicated Baltimore in the "Imanishi-Kari" affair, involving charges that Thereza Imanishi-Kari, a researcher in his laboratory, had fabricated data. Imanishi-Kari was initially found to have committed scientific fraud by the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), following highly publicized and politicized hearings. However, in 1996, she was vindicated by an appeals panel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which overturned the OSI's findings and criticized their investigation. Baltimore's staunch defense of Imanishi-Kari initially drew substantial criticism and controversy; the case itself was often referred to as "The Baltimore Affair", and contributed to his resignation as president of Rockefeller University. Following Imanishi-Kari's vindication, Baltimore's role was reassessed; the New York Times opined that "... the most notorious fraud case in recent scientific history has collapsed in embarrassment for the Federal Government and belated vindication for the accused scientist."

The 1973 prize went to Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch "for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns". Von Frisch's contribution was the "dance language" of bees. However, controversy emerged over the lack of direct proof of the waggle dance—as exactly worded by von Frisch. A team of researchers from Rothamsted Research in 2005 settled the controversy by using radar to track bees as they flew to a food source. It turns out that bees, do indeed, use the information contained in the waggle dance to find food sources.

The 1968 prize went to Robert W. Holley, Har Gobind Khorana and Marshall W. Nirenberg "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis". However, Heinrich J. Matthaei broke the genetic code in 1961 with Nirenberg in their poly-U experiment at National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, paving the way for modern genetics. Matthaei was responsible for experimentally obtaining the first codon (nucleotide triple that usually specifies an amino acid) extract, while Nirenberg tampered with his initial, accurate results (due to his belief in 'less precise', 'more believable' data presentation).

The 1962 prize was awarded to James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". It did not recognize critical contributions from Alec Stokes, Herbert Wilson, and Erwin Chargaff. In addition, Erwin Chargaff, Oswald Avery and Rosalind Franklin (whose key DNA X-ray crystallography work was the most detailed yet least acknowledged among the three) contributed directly to Watson and Crick's insight to solve the DNA molecule's structure. Avery's death in 1955, and Franklin's in 1958, eliminated them from eligibility.

The 1952 prize was awarded solely to Selman Waksman "for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis" and omitted recognition due his co-discoverer Albert Schatz. Schatz sued Waksman over the details and credit of the discovery. Schatz was awarded a substantial settlement, and, together with Waksman, Schatz was legally recognized as a co-discoverer.

The 1949 prize was awarded to Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses". Soon after, Dr. Walter Freeman developed the transorbital lobotomy, which was easier to carry out. Criticism was raised because the procedure was often prescribed injudiciously and without regard for medical ethics. Popular acceptance of the procedure had been fostered by enthusiastic press coverage such as a 1938 "New York Times" report. Endorsed by such influential publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, in the three years following the Prize, some 5,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States alone, and many more throughout the world. Joseph Kennedy, father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, had his daughter Rosemary lobotomized when she was in her twenties. The procedure later fell into disrepute and was prohibited in many countries.

The 1945 prize was awarded to Ernst Boris Chain, Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases". Fleming accidentally stumbled upon the then-unidentified fungal mold. However, some critics pointed out that Fleming did not in fact discover penicillin, that it was technically a rediscovery; decades before Fleming, Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, William Roberts (physician), John Tyndall and Ernest Duchesne) had already done studies and research on its useful properties and medicinal characteristics. Moreover, according to Fleming himself, the first known reference to penicillin was from Psalm 51: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean". Meanwhile, he had learned from mycologist Charles Thom (the same who helped Fleming establish the identity of the mysterious fungal mold) that "Penicillium notatum" was first recognized by Per Richard Westling, a Swedish pharmacist, from a specimen of decayed hyssop. In this award, as it had been pointed out, several deserving contemporaneous contributors had been left out of the Prize altogether.

The 1926 prize went to Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, "for his discovery of the Spiroptera carcinoma", a microbial parasite which Fibiger claimed was the cause of cancer. This "finding" was discredited by other scientists shortly thereafter.

The 1923 prize was awarded to Frederick Banting and John Macleod "for the discovery of insulin". Banting clearly deserved the prize, however, the choice of Macleod as co-winner was controversial. Banting initially refused to accept the prize with Macleod, claiming that he did not deserve it, and that Charles Best was the proper corecipient. Banting complained that Macleod's initial contribution to the project had only been to let Banting use his lab space at the University of Toronto while Macleod was on vacation. Macleod also loaned Banting a lab assistant (Best) to help with the experiments, and ten dogs for experimentation. Banting and Best achieved limited success with their experiments, which they presented to Macleod in the fall of 1921. Macleod pointed out design flaws in some experiments. He then advised Banting and Best to repeat the experiments with better lab equipment, more dogs, and better controls and provided better lab space. He also began paying Banting. The salary made their relationship official, and equivalent to the present-day relationship between a postdoctoral researcher and supervisor. Banting and Best repeated the experiments, which were conclusive. While Banting's original method of isolating insulin worked, it was too labor-intensive for large-scale production. Best then set about finding a biochemical extraction method. Meanwhile, James Bertram Collip, a chemistry professor on sabbatical from the University of Alberta joined what was now Macleod's team, and sought a biochemical method for extracting insulin in parallel with Best. Best and Collip simultaneously succeeded. The fact that Banting was being supported with money from Macleod's research grants was no doubt a factor in the Nobel Committee's decision. When Banting agreed to share the prize, he gave half his prize money to Best. Macleod, in turn, split his half of the prize money with Collip. Later, it became known that Nicolae Paulescu, a Romanian professor, had been working on diabetes since 1916, and may have isolated insulin (which he called pancreatine) about a year before the Canadians.

Oswald Theodore Avery, best known for his 1944 demonstration that DNA is the cause of bacterial transformation and potentially the material of which genes are composed, never received a Nobel Prize, although two Nobel Laureates, Joshua Lederberg and Arne Tiselius, praised him and his work as a pioneering platform for further genetic research. According to John M. Barry, in his book The Great Influenza, the committee was preparing to award Avery, but declined to do so after the DNA findings were published, fearing that they would be endorsing findings that had not yet survived significant scrutiny.