Taking our cues from the Ig Nobel Prizes, which tend to award whatever they find interesting and make up the categories to contain them, we here at Nobel Intent are handing out our year-end prizes for the science that did the most to grab our interest. It's not that there isn't other interesting science—we don't write up anything we find boring—but these stories seem likely to have the broadest impact or provide exceptional insight. So, on to the 2006 version of our yet unnamed awards.
Nerves/Brain/Mind: The lousy title for this category gives you some hint as to how complex the topic is, and how the English language doesn't really capture the complexity of the nerves are built into a functioning brain, which in turn does far more work than we're conscious of. That last aspect rates an honorable mention; we've hit two stories that reveal how the brain processes all sorts of information in ways that affect how you perceive the world, but never quite make it into your conscious thought processes.
As interesting as those articles are, however, top billing has to go to the first functional brain implant that allowed a paralyzed human to manipulate computer and machine interfaces. It's an old science fiction concept that may finally be having its time arrive, as judged by its appearance in a top scientific journal and use of commercially available equipment targeted towards this application. Expect to see more on this in the near future, as clinical tests continue.
Evolution: This is a tough one, because there were a number of good stories this year. High on my list has to be the sequencing of the sea urchin genome, which gave us a better sense of the diversity of the deuterostomes, a major evolutionary group that contains us, as well as a sense of the genetic toolkit that we've inherited in common. At the other end of the evolutionary scale is the Neanderthal genome, which should provide us a clearer sense of what makes modern humans truly modern compared to some of the other recent branches in the genus Homo.
But the stories that take home the prize are two examples of enormous evolutionary leaps, cases where a straightforward series of events led to a new species that's nothing like the one that started it. 2006 saw the publication of two cases where a cancer left its host behind and became a transmissible pathogen, adopting a lifestyle more similar to a virus than that of the organism that it shares a genome with. Meanwhile, an amoeba swallowed a photosynthesizing bacteria and held onto it, in a case of endosymbiosis—its now given up its predatory lifestyle and makes a living off sunlight, thanks to its internal bacterial energy source. Since both of these cases have rapid generation times, we should be able to track the changes that occur as the new organisms adapt to their radically changed lifestyles over the next few decades, which should provide us with a new window into the process of evolution.
Political lack of Science: A fine choice for this would be the Libyan government, for ignoring extensive evidence that basic bad medical practice, rather than an elaborate foreign plot, was responsible for the spread of HIV within one of their hospitals. The political motivations for the action were made clear by the fact that the Libyan government offered to release the health workers in exchange for compensation that worked out to be roughly the same amount they paid to the families of the Lockerbie victims.
But in terms of scope, simply ignoring scientific evidence doesn't cut it—that sort of thing goes on all the time. Because the winner in this category didn't just ignore science, he completely misunderstood it. The award goes to former NASA PR man George Deutsch. George seemed to suggest that science shouldn't be evaluated based on evidence, but rather based on its political implications. He repeated the classic "only a theory" creationist canard, and suggested that NASA mention Intelligent Design as an alternative to the Big Bang. His attempts to censor a senior NASA scientist is emblematic of ongoing controversies in a number of government agencies. The sheer breadth of his mis-accomplishments encompasses nearly all of the ways in which science became embroiled in political controversy in recent years. Doing of this, and more, without any apparent science qualifications and not having finished his undergraduate degree wins George this one.
Stay tuned as my fellow writers check in with their picks.