why our country has not won in scientific categories since 1959

Francis Mojica, who could have been the first Spanish scientist to receive this prestigious prize in more than half a century, was left out.

Since 1959, no Spanish researcher has entered his name in gold letters on the exclusive Swedish list. Moreover, that year’s winner, Severo Ochoa, had ceased to be Spanish three years earlier: In 1956, he adopted American nationality and renounced that of his country of origin..

Only one other national scientist has received this award during his more than hundred-year career: Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the award in 1906, in the Physiology or Medicine category.

There were other Spaniards in the Nobel scientific pools (Medicine, Chemistry and Physics). Pío del Río Hortega, who studied glial cells (complementary to the neurons in our brain), was nominated three times.

Jaume Ferrán i Clúa spent six years in swimming pools to discover a vaccine against cholera; José Gómez Ocaña was nominated three times for his research on the thyroid and August Pi i Sunyer for his contributions to the knowledge of reflexes and physical stimuli.

All were candidates in the first decades of the 20th century.. Since the end of the civil war and with the exception of Severo Ochoa, no other Spanish scientist has appeared in the list of Nobel Prizes… until Mojica.

A nuance must be introduced here. The candidacy of the biologist from Alicante is not official. The nominations are secret and are not made public until at least 50 years later. In fact, the last year available on the Nobel Prize website is 1970.

It was Mojica who was the first to discover strange palindromic sequences (they can be read from left to right as well as from right to left) in the genome of certain archaea (unicellular organisms) from the Santa Pola marshes.

Additionally, he is the creator of the word “CRISPR” and the one who proposed that it is a defense mechanism against viruses.

It was other scientists who demonstrated that this could be applied to gene editing like high-precision scissors and, ultimately, some of them won the Nobel: notably Doudna and Charpentier, but it could have been act of a good handful of additional researchers.

The great Spanish scientists left the country with the establishment of Francoism, but we have had almost half a century of democracy and Spanish science has grown to be among the top 15 in the world in terms of study production. Why is it still ignored in the world’s most famous awards?

Eduardo López Collazo, of the Research Institute of the University Hospital of La Paz, pointed out in an opinion article in SPANISH–SDGs One of the reasons is the narrow-mindedness of the administration responsible for this wasteland.

“Our country has not realized that science with a capital letter is created in basic laboratories; where we look for “extraordinary” explanations and where we test “crazy” ideas. In other words , where we study the basics of everything.”

This means “support only those proposals which have an immediate and clear application”, that is to say “the project which can be applied tomorrow afternoon”. This sounds interesting and even hopeful, but in reality, with this policy we are moving away from science. it contributes and, in the long run, is profitable, so it keeps us away from the Nobel Prize.

Nobel inbreeding

There are other structural reasons specific to the Nobel Prize: an analysis of the winners published last week in Nature revealed that the winners generally belong to the same academic network.

“You can greatly improve your chances of winning a Nobel by working in the lab of a scientist who already has one or will have one in the future, or by working with someone whose mentor won it.” And most of them are in the United States.

“The incredible number of 702 researchers out of 736 laureates in science and economics until 2023 are part of the same academic familytold by a common link at a given moment in history.

Scientific consultant Mushtaq Bilal gave an example on the social network

The other winner, Gary Ruvkun, worked with Walter Gilbert (1980 winner) and Robert Horvitz (2003 winner). He was supervised by James Dewey Watson (awarded in 1962), himself supervised by Salvador Edward Luria (awarded in 1969).

Joaquin Sevilleprofessor of electronic technology at the Public University of Navarra, points out that “of course it is a rancid and inertial system that does not choose Spaniards, but what is much more scandalous is that it does not choose women” .

However, this”It keeps being “the teacher has a thing for me”. Some self-criticism is also advised.” The Spanish R&D system has become increasingly sophisticated and now “a lot more money is spent on it, Spanish scientific personnel are present in international networks and are carrying out first-rate science in a high proportion. But in the middle of the table. »

“Really large-scale projects, with differential funding concentrated in a small group, do not exist. And that’s where we can really stand out.”

Spanish universities are doing remarkable work but “there is no remarkable high school that can accommodate a ‘Nobel’ group.” However, Seville believes that this is not a bad thing because the system is consistent and there are no bad public universities.

One of the Spanish researchers who appears in the pools is the biologist Eva Nogaleswho developed his career at the University of Berkeley, California (and which has more than fifty laureates).

“I think it’s a question of numbers. How many researchers are there in different countries doing science, and how much is invested per researcher in each of them? How much and who makes the appointments? C It’s by invitation only, so who invites those who How much are scientists from different countries exposed to the academy members who make the final decision?

Nogales points out that no award is completely fair, “in the sense that there are many more people who deserve them but very few are awarded.”

That’s why this question bothers him. What is “fascinating” about science is “using reason and systematic work to learn the secrets of nature”, not “that someone wears a tailcoat to go see the kings of Sweden once a year. “A scientist is the same person the day before and the day after the Nobel Prize is announced, whether he receives it or not.”