Not MS, but Nobel prize for 25y old discovery!?!?

CureOrBust · Post by **CureOrBust** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:16 am

For those who think or hope the scientific community are quick to recognise and accept new findings (you know what I'm talking about....) this story concerns me a little.

If the story is right, the latest nobel prize is going to a discovery from WAAAAY back.

Nobel win for Elizabeth Blackburn

... That discovery was made 25 years ago, but even at that moment Professor Blackburn knew she was onto something big. "I felt very excited ... and I thought this is very interesting, this is a very important result, and you don't often feel that," she said.

I know I can't wait 25y for anything discovered for MS

By the way, its actually a team of researchers, but they have locked onto the fact there is a female in the team, and she's australian, so local papers get a double whammy.

patientx · Post by **patientx** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:00 am

I wouldn't worry too much, I think this is just the way the awarding of Nobel prizes works. It seems they are always awarding for something in the past. This year's physics award went to the physicists who developed the charge coupled device (CCD) - work done in the late 1960's. But the application (fiber optics) has evolved greatly in the meantime

And Einstein didn't receive his Nobel prize until 16 years after he published his work - and it wasn't even for his best known work. Quantum physics didn't really wait for the Nobel committee in the meantime.

So just because this award is coming 25 years after the fact doesn't mean the research hasn't been proceeding all along.

lyndacarol · Post by **lyndacarol** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:12 pm

Barry Marshall received the Nobel Prize for his discovery that H. pylori is the cause of stomach ulcers 20 years after the fact.

CureOrBust · Post by **CureOrBust** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:36 am

see, I never herd of this fact until they won the prize. Are you sure they were able to PROVE it 20 years ago?