We like scientific breakthroughs. Humanity ultimately relies on them. So it matters if we’re missing out on discoveries.
But compelling evidence that we are indeed missing out comes from a new study of the childhood background (measured on the basis of their father’s occupation) of some very successful scientists: Nobel laureates.
If talent and opportunity were equally distributed, the average winner would come from a middle income background. The reality? The average laureate grew up in a household just below the top 10%. More than 50% come from the top 5%. Dads of laureates are likely to be business owners, doctors or engineers (not politicians, sorry kids).
So either talent is hugely unequally distributed, concentrated among richer families, or opportunity is. It’s the latter. Reinforcing the case that a more equal sharing of opportunity would mean more scientific progress, the authors show that cities that have more intergenerational mobility produce more laureates.
Want your kids to win a Nobel and can’t change your own occupation? The research offers two bits of advice. Have a son (you need to be from a particularly rich family if you’re a woman, indicative of the wider barriers women face in science), and live in America.
Access to scientific opportunity has improved over the Nobel prizes’ 125 years. The typical winner was in the top 10% in 1900 as against the top 20% now. But here’s a sobering fact on the size of the “lost Einstein” problem, as other academics have called it. Those born in richer countries, not just to richer families, are far more likely to win a Nobel. This gap has hardly closed in a century. That’s a lot of talent wasted. And breakthroughs lost.
• Torsten Bell is Labour MP for Swansea West and author of Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back
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