I recently received an offer for a research award for early-stage scholars producing outstanding research in my field. I have verified the award and the association are genuine and I have colleagues who have won the prize previously.
The problem is two-fold.
The first problem is that I don't think I deserve the award. Not wishing to blow things out of proportion, the award is good to have but won't make you famous. Yet, having looked at past winners, some of them are professors and all of them had a higher h-index than me when they were awarded. Comparing our research, I simply think there is no comparison, my research is not as good as past winner's - although I have an upcoming paper that may have some impact (colleagues seem to think so). Some of the past winners are my colleagues and co-authors.
The second problem is that the award seems to be won by nomination, typically by colleagues, who would have forwarded the nominee's website and CV. I don't want my colleagues to look stupid by declining the award, which would, of course, be a strange thing for most people to do.
I feel that I have been misjudged (too positively) and it just would not sit right to accept the award. On the other hand, I do not want to ask colleagues what to do since they have already been quite kind in accommodating my anxiety (I think), in general, and recently they have been quite generous in other regards.
Although the award is not a big deal my question is: will rejecting it harm my colleagues or me in some way?
Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.
Update: Thank you for those replies that answered the question. Kimball's ("awards are not about deserving"), xleitix's, and Dan Romik's (right to decline) answers were the most illuminating. It seems like I should accept. I think perhaps I was unclear since some are replying as if I come from a position of arrogance, my main motivation is to not embarrass myself or others.
Answer
Will declining a research award be problematic for myself or other people?
It's problematic in the sense that it would very likely be a mistake, and undermine the goal that the award is trying to achieve, to the detriment of yourself (mainly) and to a lesser extent of the scientific community you belong to. In a system that is supposed to function as a meritocracy, each time a talented person or their work does not get recognition that they deserve, everybody is hurt a little bit.
As for why it is likely to be a mistake, the main point to keep in mind is that it is a very rare individual who has the capacity to assess him/herself as objectively and accurately as he/she is assessed by others -- almost everyone suffers a bias in one direction or another in how accurately they perceive their level of talent and achievements. In many people this manifests itself in the direction of thinking they are smarter than they really are and that their achievements are more significant than they really are - this is the Dunning-Kruger effect, tied to narcissism and egotism. In other people one sees the opposite effect where the person thinks they and their achievements are less worthy of praise than they really are, a phenomenon known (at least in certain contexts) as impostor syndrome, and sometimes associated with issues of depression and low self-esteem. Both of these effects are well-known examples of cognitive biases.
Now, we don't know whether you suffer from any of these biases. But the general principle is that people are untrustworthy judges of their own worth. For this reason, when we finish papers and grant proposals we send it off for other people to critique, and accept their judgment of how good the work is. The same principle goes for awards; people who are more senior and established than you have considered possible candidates for the award and decided that you are the most worthy among them. You don't have either the information that they had of who they were comparing you to, or the ability of the committee members to look at you and the other candidates objectively (or at least more objectively) without being influenced by the very common biases I described above. The logical conclusion is that their judgment that you should receive the award is much more likely to be accurate than yours.
Anyway, good luck no matter what you end up deciding. Although I have an opinion on what would be the better choice, I do think you have a full right to decline the award, and disapprove of the "get over yourself" sentiment expressed in this answer (which I downvoted) linked to from Stella Biderman's answer (which was excellent and I upvoted, along with xLeitix's also excellent answer).
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