It is the ultimate accolade, but critics claim the award is now out of step with modern collaborative research methods

A small group of scientists will achieve international stardom this week. They will learn they have won Nobel prizes in physiology, chemistry and physics, and their lives will be transformed. Each will win hundreds of thousands of pounds and they will be feted as infallible sages on science – and other topics outside their expertise.

But many now question this deification of scientists and believe Nobel prizes are dangerously out of kilter with the processes of modern research. By stressing individual achievements, they say, Nobels encourage competition at the expense of cooperation. They want the system to be changed.

“The Nobel prizes have strayed far from the vision their founder had for them, and they badly need to be reorganised,” said cosmologist Brian Keating, of the University of California, San Diego. “They reward an outdated version of science.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society and joint winner of the 2009 chemistry Nobel, is also critical. In his book Gene Machine, he says that “the [Nobel] prize has increasingly become a lottery” and is part of a global awards system “beset by cronyism”.

Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, has argued that the Nobel prize skews the public’s idea about which sciences are important. “Only three sciences get Nobel awards: chemistry, physics and physiology,” said Lord Rees. “Mathematics is ignored, as are computing, robotics and artificial intelligence as well as environmental sciences.”

Keating is also critical of the Nobel awards committee’s intense secrecy. “You do not know who else was nominated for a prize, nor do you learn who did the nominating,” he said. “You just get a pronouncement from the mount, a sacred process like the naming of a new pope.”

Nobel prizes for science, peace and literature were established by the Swedish arms manufacturer Alfred Nobel in his will. Since 1901, more than a billion dollars has been given to laureates, creating a prize that has become “the world’s most prestigious award”, according to Keating.

Early recipients included Marie and Pierre Curie, Paul Dirac and Albert Einstein, who worked at a time when individual scientists could make breakthroughs in quantum physics and relativity. There were still some “terrible omissions”, as Ramakrishnan points out. Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the periodic table of elements, and Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission, should have won Nobels but did not.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The laureate medal, featuring a portrait of the founder Alfred Nobel. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Worse, regulations later imposed by the Nobel prize committee increased the injustices – in particular, the rule that states that no more than three people can win an individual science Nobel. The problem triggered by this ruling is illustrated by the prize given in 2013 to Peter Higgs and François Englert for theoretical work that led to the discovery, in 2012, of the sub-atomic particle that was named the Higgs boson and which plays an important role in the distribution of mass in the universe.

In fact, six scientists, including Higgs and Englert, did key theoretical work. Of these, Britain’s Tom Kibble, who died in 2016, was as strong a Nobel candidate as any of the others, said Rees. For his part, Keating plumped for Gerry Guralnik, of Brown University, Rhode Island, another member of the Higgs six, as being the best candidate for a Nobel. Neither was selected.

Last year’s physics Nobel recognised the first observation of gravitational waves, a discovery outlined in a paper signed by more than 1,000 scientists. The prize honoured only three of them.

As Ramakrishnan says: “The rule of three is inappropriate today.” Keating agreed: “Apart from leading to examples of scientific injustice, the rule of three reinforces the layperson’s impression that science is done by one or two lone geniuses – usually white males – working without vast support networks behind them.”

Only two women have ever won physics Nobels. “If a woman wins one next week, she will be the first for 50 years,” said Keating.

At the same time, the myth of the lone genius elevates a few Nobel winners to a godlike state – and that is harmful, said the Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes. “It reflects a mistaken view of science, attributing supernatural powers and wisdom to individual scientists, when modern science is very much a group affair.”

Rees agreed: “Even the best scientists have narrow expertise, and their opinions on general topics carry no special weight. It is possible to find a laureate to support almost any cause, however eccentric, and some exploit their status.”

Winners who have triggered consternation for utterances outside their fields of expertise include the Norwegian Ivar Giaever, who won a physics Nobel – in 1973 – for work on superconductivity but who denies Earth is affected in any way by global warming.

“Another appalling example is William Shockley, who exploited his status as a Nobel winner to promote racist ideas of intelligence, about which he had no expertise and clearly no wisdom,” added Oreskes.

However, critics say there is one easy way to improve matters – because there is a precedent for giving Nobel prizes to organisations as well as individuals. In 2007, Al Gore won the Nobel peace prize along with the entire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work on global warming. The Red Cross has also won peace prizes.

“So there is a perfectly good example within the Nobel prize system of groups being allowed to receive awards,” said Keating. “The teams that cooperated to discover gravitational waves and the Higgs boson could have been honoured and the cult of the lone genius circumvented. That is the kind of change we need.”