Contrast an Episode of Columbo with the recent Nobel Prizes

 I quote Lance's blog post (here) about Computing and the Nobels

a) On Wednesday October 9th half of the Chemistry Nobel was awarded to computer scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for the protein-folding prediction algorithm AlphaFold, which I (Lance) consider the most impressive and game-changing application of machine learning.

b) The day before John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the Physics Nobel for the development of neural nets that lead to AlphaFold, Large-Language models, and so much more.

Bottom line: The Nobel Prize in CHEM and PHYSICS went to COMPUTER SCIENTISTS. That's probably not quite right since I am sure that the people involved KNEW lots of Chemistry and Physics. 

In Feb 10, 1974 there was an episode of Columbo called Mind Over Mayhem (see here for a summary) where one of the plot threads was the following: 

a) Carl Finch, a great scientist, dies (of natural causes) and in his files is a ground breaking theory of molecular matter.

b) Neil Cahill who was working with Finch as a computer programmer knows about the file and codes up stuff in it and claims the work as his own.   He is initially not caught and he wins the Scientist of the Year Award. 

c) I won't get into who gets murdered or how Columbo catches them.(Has anyone in the real world been murdered because of an academic dispute?)

When I first saw it I had two thoughts:

1) If Neil had claimed co-authorship that would be more honest and hence would not need to be covered up or lead to murder. AND Neil would STILL get credit

2) More important for now: a computer programmer who coded up stuff was considered NOT part of the research in 1974. And now? Well the description of what the Nobel's did seems far more impressive than what Neil Cahill did, though since Neil Cahill is fictional it's hard to say. 

The question of  how much credit should a programmer on a project get? was unintentionally raised way back in 1974. And now? I have not seen ANY objection to computer scientists winning Nobel Prizes in Chem and Physics so the question seems to not be controversial. I agree with this though I am surprised by the lack of controversy. I also note that I used the term Programmer which is not accurate. They were computer scientists. Having said that, programmers also deserve credit. How much is hard to say. The distinction between computer scientists and programmers is also hard to say. But if programmers were considered part of the research in 1974, a fictional murder could have been prevented. 

(ADDED LATER: Lance saw this post after I posted it and emailed me a link to an article that DID hae some objections to giving a Nobel Prize for AI work. I disagree with the objections, but in the interest of being giving intelligent opposing viewpoints,   the link is here.)