A Nobel Day

Last Tuesday I had the pleasure to participate in the first "A Nobel Day" event, which took place in Lisbon and intends to spread around the world in a similar way to the TEDTalks. The idea of these events is to bring together Nobel Laureates, potential candidates and past nominees, within Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace into discussion panels around several interesting issues. More information can be found on their webside, http://www.anobelday.com/.

The first two panels, which were open to the public after registration, had the broad enough topics of "Financial Problems with Science" and "Future of Scientific Investigation" to interest non-health professionals such as myself.

I must say the event did not start all that great for me, with what I consider some strange and important organisation failures.
First, for some reason they thought I had signed up for the professionals sessions in the afternoon, and wanted to give me access accordingly. This was really strange, since to attend those you both had to pay a fee (which for me was marked as payed, although I obviously did not) and give credencials of your technical expertise in the area (which I obviously do not have).
Then the 1st panel's chair, Dr Maria de Belém, did not leave such a good impression. She seemed to struggle a lot with the (English) language, she wasted most of the time with off-topic issues (namely details on the current research project of the guests and talked in Portuguese a lot, while the guests stood idle and bored without understanding a word. Although one of the invited speaker did not say a word after the short introduction in the beggining, the chair made no attempt of drawing her into the discussion. Still, the panel managed to talk about some relevant and important issues, such as the excessive administrative/burocratic on head-researchers, different ways of financing research and where most of money has came from (historically) and why.

The 2nd panel was trully amazing and saved the day. The char, Dr Ritu Dhand (Nature Chief Biological Sciences Editor), had the confidence and expertise to keep a steady, relevant, interesting, informal and even sometimes funny conversation. Rather than the topics themselves, I would rather write about this odd situation that took place right in the beginning. After a particularly long question by Dr. Ritu, Professor Smithies (Nobel Price in 2007) replied "Can you rephrase that? I couldn't hear anything because I'm deaf". I recall immediately thinking Oh dear, they invited an old senile into the discussion just for his long passed achievements... This totally unfair thought illustrates two things: my grumpyness and stupidity when having woken up too early and, at the same time, the general western perspective towards older people. Fortunately I was soon able to realise my grave mistake and acknowledge Professor Smithis insight and quick thinking. It is amazing and scary the speed at which we can emmit (wrong) judgements about someone, especially when influenced by distorted stereotypes.

A very important point, stressed by several of the speakers, is the need to discuss the cost/benefits of some extremely expensive medical treatments. They seemed to believe that this lack of discussion is due to the unwillingness of politicians to bring it into public debate, since "no one earns votes speaking about death". Truthful as it may sound, doctors still have their share of responsability for not being able to reach general public more directly.

All in all A Nobel Day was an extremely interesting event which hopefully will be repeated around the world.


Filipe Baptista de Morais