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The Nobel Prize in Medicine: Was there a Religious Factor this Year?

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  • The Nobel Prize in Medicine: Was there a Religious Factor this Year?

    The Nobel Prize in Medicine
    Author(s): Michael Ruse

    Metanexus Salus
    2004.03.16.

    In the op/ed piece below, Michael Ruse, Professor of the Philosophy of
    Biology at Florida State University, considers the possible political
    and religious issues at stake in the selection of winners of the 2003
    Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The 2003 prize was awarded to
    Dr. Paul Lauterbur and Dr. Peter Mansfield for their work in magnetic
    resonance imaging (MRI). Amidst the controversy surrounding the Nobel
    committee's exclusion of Dr. Raymond Damadian despite his groundbreaking
    work in MRI, Ruse speculates that Damadian's exclusion was motivated by
    knowledge of his religious commitments, specifically his support of
    creation science.

    Michael Ruse was born in 1940 in Birmingham, England. He received a B.A.
    in Philosophy and Mathematics from Bristol University in 1962, an M.A.
    in Philosophy from McMaster University in 1964, and a Ph.D. from Bristol
    University in 1970. Ruse has worked at the University of Guelph in
    Ontario, Canada since 1965, obtaining the rank of Professor. He has been
    a visiting professor and scholar at Cambridge University, Harvard
    University, and Indiana University. Ruse is a fellow of the Royal
    Society of Canada, the AAAS, Guggenheim, Killam, the John Templeton
    Foundation, and a Gifford Lectures. Ruse is the author of many books,
    including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. 1979;
    Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy 1986; The
    Philosophy of Biology 1989; Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in
    Evolutionary Biology 1996; Readings in the Philosophy of Biology, 1998
    with David Hull; Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social
    Construction? 1999; Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship
    between Science and Religion, 2001; The Evolution Wars, 2000; The Nature
    of Science, (forthcoming 2001); Darwin and Design: Science, Philosophy,
    Religion, 2003; Cloning (edited volume), 2001.

    --Editor



    The Nobel Prize in Medicine - Was there a Religious Factor in this
    Year's (Non) Selection?

    By Michael Ruse

    Dr. Raymond Damadian failed to be included in this year's Nobel honors
    for work in Medicine, and feels sore about it. Although he was the
    inventor of the first machine that discovers cancers through magnetic
    resonance imaging, the award went to two other and somewhat subsequent
    scientists, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. Notoriously, the Nobel
    committees never reveal their deliberations (until everyone is long
    dead) and never change their minds. So, although by having taken out
    advertisements of protest in the New York Times and the Washington Post
    may make him feel somewhat better, and draw attention to his bad luck,
    Damadian seems fated to remain with the rest of us who are not Nobel
    Laureates. He will join Charles Best of Banting and Best fame who
    discovered the significance of insulin treatment for diabetes -
    Frederick Banting and his boss J.J.R. McCleod (who was on vacation at
    the time) got the award and Best the junior scientist was left out.

    But perhaps Dr. Damadian does have reason to feel having been slighted
    for the wrong reasons. He is not just an inventor, but also a very
    prominent Christian. And not just a Christian of any bland kind, but a
    Creation Scientist - one of those people who believes that the Bible,
    especially including Genesis, is absolutely literally true - six days of
    creation, Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all of the
    rest. It is as least as likely a hypothesis that Damadian was ignored by
    the Nobel committee because they did not want to award a Prize to an
    American fundamentalist Christian as that they did not think his work
    merited the fullest accolade. In the eyes of rational Europeans - and
    Swedes are nothing if not rational Europeans - it is bad enough that
    such people exist, let alone give them added status and a pedestal from
    which to preach their silly ideas. Especially a scientific pedestal from
    which to preach their silly anti-science ideas.

    Is this unfair? One certainly feels a certain sympathy for the Nobel
    committee. Creation science is wrong and (if taught to young people as
    the truth) dangerous. It does represent everything against which good
    science stands. However, even the best scientists believe some very
    strange things, and if we start judging one area of their work in terms
    of other beliefs that they have, we could well do more harm than good.
    Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of them all, had some very strange
    views about the proper interpretation of such Biblical books as Daniel
    and Revelation, and in respects believed things about the universe - its
    past and its future - that make today's Creation Scientists seem
    comparatively mild. More recently, Alfred Russel Wallace, the
    co-discoverer of natural selection along with Charles Darwin, became an
    enthusiast for spiritualism, believing that there are hidden forces
    controlling every aspect of life. People knew this and were embarrassed
    by it, but it did not stop them from celebrating and praising Wallace's
    great scientific work. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
    given Britain's greatest award for achievement, the Order of Merit.

    All of my life I have fought for evolution and against Creationism - in
    writings, on the podium, and in court in 1981 as a witness in Arkansas
    against a law demanding that Creation Science be taught alongside
    evolution in the state supported schools. But as one who loves science
    above all and thinks it the greatest triumph of the human spirit - as
    one who has no religious beliefs whatsoever - I cringe at the thought
    that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his
    religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to
    deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that
    this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason
    to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of
    the scientific community.
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