Paul Nurse: Does winning a Nobel prize make you less productive? Do you get ‘Nobelitis’? Here’s what it did to me

Paul Nurse in The Guardian:

The prize changed our lives. It is the one scientific prize everyone knows. Suddenly you become a public figure being asked to do all sorts of things: to give lectures, quite often on topics you know little about; to sit on committees and reviews you are not always well qualified to be on; to visit countries you have barely heard of; to sign endless petitions on what are probably good causes, but you never know. It is like having a whole new extra job, with upwards of 500 requests a year. It is impostor syndrome on steroids.

A big problem is that people think you have something sensible to say about nearly everything. Over time it can become dangerous, as you start to believe that perhaps you do know about nearly everything.

More here.