Comment Re:Distortion (Score 1) 192
How exactly does this award help anyone? He's given a prize to a bunch of professors who already have tenure. They do not need incentives to do original work.
But they do need funding to hire post docs and students to help/do the work with/for them, and to buy equipment.
Meanwhile, grad students and postdocs (who do most of the real work in the field and are the most capable, and motivated) live hand to mouth, have no sense of job stability, and no possibility to pursue truly creative work.
Oh, hey, maybe they can make some type of connection here... I doubt these professors will be spending their awards on caviar and beach houses. That may just be wishful thinking.
Instead they live under the thumb of just those kind of people that received this award. They're forced to pursue old, dead ideas that have not gone anywhere (but are favorites of their advisers/supervisors). Theoretical physics has been stagnating for decades. The Higgs boson is a 40-50 year old idea, and virtually all new ideas in the meantime have been utter bullshit (string theory, supersymmetry, extra dimensions, etc). The field is grasping at straws because the majority of the people working cannot pursue long-term goals, or risky ideas.
Yes, these awards will not solve these problems.
A better award would be to give say $500k to 54 promising postdocs who do not have tenure, to encourage them to go in new directions.
That was actually pretty much my first thought too- it would be better spread further.
