SoylentNews

More Science Funding Increases Nobel Prizes

posted by LaminatorX on Saturday March 29 2014, @10:00AM   
from the Utterly-Obvious dept.

lhsi writes:

Some recent research has suggested that there is a link between certain foods such as chocolate and obtaining a Nobel prize. New research found dedicating a high proportion of GDP to research and a high number of scientific papers published were more accurate predictors.

From the article:

Several recent studies have described a strong correlation between nutritional or economic data and the number of Nobel awards obtained across a large range of countries. This sheds new light on the intriguing question of the key predictors of Nobel awards chances. However, all these studies have been focused on a single predictor and were only based on simple correlation and/or linear model analysis. The main aim of the present study was thus to clarify this debate by simultaneously exploring the influence of food consumption (cacao, milk, and wine), economic variables (gross domestic product) and scientific activity (number of publications and research expenditure) on Nobel awards. An innovative statistical analysis, hierarchical partitioning, has been used because it enables us to reduce collinearity problems by determining and comparing the independent contribution of each factor. Our results clearly indicate that a country's number of Nobel awards can be mainly predicted by its scientific achievements such as number of publications and research expenditure. Conversely, dietary habits and the global economy variable are only minor predictors; this finding contradicts the conclusions of previous studies. Dedicating a large proportion of the GDP to research and to the publication of a high number of scientific papers would thus create fertile ground for obtaining Nobel awards.

• Chocolate consumptionChocolate consumption (Score: 3, Interesting) by umafuckitt on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:14PM

  by umafuckitt (20) on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:14PM (#22872)

  Increasing chocoloate consumption [scientificamerican.com] also increases Nobel prizes. Must by why China is winning few of them despite investing very heavily in research in recent years.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Troll=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3

• Re:Chocolate consumption(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:33PM

  by umafuckitt (20) on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:33PM (#22877)

  Ah, I see. They've actually added the chocolate thing to their model(!). I've not heard of hierarchical partitioning before, but I found a few links in case others are interested: R library, hier.part [r-project.org], paper from 1991 [tandfonline.com], and a PLoS ONE paper from 2010 [plosone.org].

  Parent

• Re:Chocolate consumption(Score: 5, Interesting) by Open4D on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:47PM

  by Open4D (371) on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:47PM (#22878) Journal

  The article seems to have been a reaction to the chocolate study, and to others that followed it.

  The abstract was doing okay until the final sentence ...

  Dedicating a large proportion of the GDP to research and to the publication of a high number of scientific papers would thus create fertile ground for obtaining Nobel awards.

  So they've gone from talking about correlation, to all of a sudden making recommendations that assume causation. To me this is little better than the practice of "giving nutritional advice based on simple correlations observed between nutriment consumption and cognitive ability", which they criticize.

   
  N.B. They say

  Nobel Prizes are not the only index of scientific achievement and their attribution is influenced by non-scientific factors (e.g., political or diplomatic reasons).

  That's an understatement.

  Parent