Nobel body should embrace broader definition of science

IN THE mid-1960s, Robert Paine, a scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, discovered a hidden organising principle in the coastal ecosystem he was studying. When a certain species of starfish was present, a panoply of algae, limpets, barnacles, anemones and mussels lived in delicate, dynamic balance. But when he removed the starfish and tossed them into the ocean, that balance collapsed and one kind of mussel took over.

Dr Paine coined a term to describe the starfish's outsize influence: keystone species. Keystone species have since been identified in forests, in grasslands, in the ocean and even in the human gut. The concept has become one of ecology's guiding theoretical principles, and it has had a profound impact, inspiring, among other things, the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, where they help control elk that can otherwise overgraze aspen and willow trees.

If Dr Paine, who passed away in June, had been a physicist, chemist or cell biologist, such a fundamental, broadly applicable and hugely influential paradigm would probably have put him in contention for a Nobel Prize. But he was an ecologist, so he had no shot at the prestige, power and wealth that the Nobel Prizes bestow. The same can be said for the world's top geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, climatologists, crop scientists, botanists, entomologists and practitioners of many other fields.