Michael Shermer with Dr. Brian Keating — Losing the Nobel Prize (SCIENCE SALON # 70)

About this episode:

We apologize for the very poor audio-video quality of this recording.

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A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor

In this wide-ranging conversation Science Salon host Dr. Michael Shermer speaks with cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment Dr. Brian Keating about the following topics:

• how he almost won the Nobel Prize for his research that confirmed the inflationary model of the Big Bang

• the problems with the Nobel Prize as it is currently structured, such as its limitation to only three people (when modern experiments are typically directed by a great many more); that it can’t be awarded posthumously (thereby neglecting people like Amos Tversky, who did as much work as his Nobel Prize-winning collaborator Daniel Kahneman); its neglect of many women scientists as deserving of the prize as their male counterparts, and especially how it distorts incentives to collaborate in science

• his upbringing and what inspired him to probe the deepest questions about the nature of the cosmos and reality

• what it’s like conducting research in the harsh conditions at the South Pole

• what banged in the Big Bang and what there was before the Big Bang

• the possibility (or not) of a multiverse model and a cyclical model of universes outside of, or before, our universe

• the relationship between science and religion and why they need not always be in conflict

• his Prager U video on why believing in the multiverse takes as much faith as believing in God.

This dialogue was recorded on May 21, 2019 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.

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