Nobelitis

Relations between research labs in Cambridge England and Cambridge Massachusetts have been under considerable strain during the past few months. The strain has been said to derive from Nobelitis, a disease common in high-powered academic circles during the summer months. And the point at issue concerns who first solved the correct structure of transfer RNA (see this week's Monitor, p 709) – Aaron Klug and his colleagues in England, or Alexander Rich at MIT?

But I certainly don't agree with critics of the late Faulkner who implicitly side with Phil Stone's comment that Faulkner got "Nobelitis in the head," and that his public life in the fifties is a direct expression of an inflated and preening sense of himself as having been certified Wise and so competent to speak on all things.

There are many examples of laureates who seem to suffer from Nobelitis, and I can mention here a few, to make the point. […] One of the most versatile minds of the 20th century, Linus Pauling, a double Nobel Prize winner, claimed that he could cure cancer with mega-doses of vitamin C and was subsequently ridiculed for the sloppy design of his clinical trials, making the point that brilliance in chemistry and ignorance in epidemiological design can bring about disastrous results.