70. Dr. Brian Keating — Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor

The Michael Shermer Show

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.

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This Science Salon was recorded on May 21, 2019. We apologize for the very poor audio-video quality of this recording.

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