诺贝尔奖 z-bio 2025-10-09 3602

　　The annual Nobel Prize is here again. On October 6, 2025, Mary.E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi jointly won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their breakthrough discoveries in peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body. The prize for this award is 11 million Swedish kronor (approximately RMB 8.34 million), shared by three people.

　　"Their discovery plays a decisive role in our understanding of how the human immune system works and why we do not suffer from serious autoimmune diseases." Nobel Committee Chairman Olle Kämpe commented in a press release. However, why so many domestic academicians cannot win the Nobel Prize? The views of Wang Yifang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, may be used as a reference.

　　Nowadays, all kinds of hats are flying all over the sky. Young scientific researchers have been pursuing this hat since they graduated from Ph.D. From the postdoc (starting), he will be able to win some kind of postdoctoral award, and then in the future he will be an outstanding junior, and he will be an outstanding junior, and then he will go up step by step... His goal is not a real scientific pursuit, but to show that "I am a scientist." He needs to have an explanation for himself through some external recognition, and even an explanation for the surrounding environment, including his unit. This, I think is a little too much. There are also various awards abroad. Generally speaking, people don't care that much about them. They just say, hey, it's great for you to win an award. It doesn't matter if you don't. In China, it seems that at that age, if you don’t get an outstanding young person or an academician, you are considered not a good scientist. In this environment, the evaluation criteria are too single. In China, there seems to be a huge difference between having academicians and not having them. Abroad, no one knows who is an academician. You sit with everyone else wherever you go. There is no rostrum or front position. It doesn’t matter who you are. Even if you are a Nobel Prize winner, everyone knows you are. No one will introduce you when you appear. You are just a scientist. Everyone is equal...

　　"Our current scientific researchers think about being an 'official' and getting a 'hat' all day long, instead of calming down and doing research properly."

　　Recently, Wang Yifang’s speech at an internal seminar caused a huge response in the scientific research community. This physicist, who is world-famous for his Daya Bay neutrino experiment, pointed out a stubborn problem in the current scientific research ecosystem - the excessive pursuit of titles and hats has become a "new imperial examination" in academia.

　　——It is lost.

　　In the current scientific research world, “hats” are flying everywhere. From "Thousand Young Talents" to "Yangtze River Scholars", from "Outstanding Youth" to "Academician", various talent titles form a hierarchical "hat system". These honors, originally established to motivate scientific researchers, have gradually evolved into core indicators for resource allocation in practice. Statistics show that scientific researchers with “hats” often receive several or even dozens of times more financial support than ordinary scientific researchers. This serious tilt in resource allocation has caused a large number of scientific researchers to shift their energy from the laboratory to the battle for "hats".

　　Under the erosion of title culture, the scientific research ecology has been seriously distorted. Young scientific researchers no longer discuss the subtlety and depth of scientific problems, but carefully calculate the "hat" conditions that need to be met for each career jump.

　　A young scholar who has just returned to China said frankly: "My mentor told me directly that the most important thing in the first three years is not to make breakthrough results, but to win the title of 'Youth Top' talent, otherwise subsequent development will be difficult." This value of "titles first, scientific research second" is spreading widely.

　　What’s even more serious is that the strong binding of titles and resources has given rise to the “Matthew Effect” in academia. Once you put on a certain "hat", projects, funding, and teams will follow one after another, and it is difficult for researchers without titles to get support even if they have outstanding ideas. A teacher from a university revealed that “whether there are talents” has become a potential scoring item in the school’s internal project review. This evaluation mechanism that judges heroes based on titles is stifling the diversity and inclusiveness that scientific exploration should have.

　　Academician Wang Yifang pointed out that behind this alienation phenomenon is the simplification and rigidity of the scientific research evaluation system. When academic institutions regard the number of talent titles as a "hard indicator" to demonstrate their strength, and when management departments directly link the number of "hats" to resource allocation, the nature of scientific research is wrapped up in utilitarianism. Scientific exploration should be a free, diverse, and uncertain intellectual adventure, but it has been reduced to a utilitarian pursuit of titles.

　　To break this dilemma, we must reshape scientific research values, return academics to academics, and put down our hats. On the one hand, it is necessary to reform the evaluation mechanism, establish a diversified evaluation system oriented to actual contributions, and weaken the weight of titles in resource allocation. On the other hand, scientific researchers themselves also need to reflect inwardly and remember that true academic dignity comes from breaking through the boundaries of knowledge, not the aura of a title.

　　On the scientific path of pursuing truth, titles should become a natural extension of scientific research contributions, rather than the goal of utilitarian pursuit. When more scientific researchers can concentrate on the laboratory instead of rushing to various review venues, and when academic institutions can be proud of breakthrough discoveries rather than the number of "hats", our scientific research ecosystem can be truly healthy.