What’s in the cards for this year’s Nobel Prizes? Scientists are placing their bets

We’re not saying that discovering molecular drivers of cancer or cancer-causing genes doesn’t deserve the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology. But for Dr. Brian Druker (whose work led to the targeted leukemia drug Gleevec), Dr. Dennis Slamon (Herceptin), and Mary-Claire King (the BRCA breast- and ovarian-cancer gene), 2019 is probably not their year to be summoned to Stockholm: The 2018 medicine Nobel honored immuno-oncology, and according to STAT’s Nobel crystal ball, cancer won’t win two years in a row.

With the naming of the science Nobels fast approaching — the medicine prize will be announced on Oct. 7, physics on Oct. 8, chemistry on Oct. 9 — polls, betting pools, and number crunching are in full swing, using approaches from toting up how many “predictor” prizes a scientist has won to calculating the periodicity of awards, meaning how many years pass before a specific subfield is honored again.

Past laureates, who get to submit nominations every year after though they usually are. As 2018 chemistry winner Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology said, “It’s not helpful to second-guess these things!”