More than a year ago, a trusted freind emailed to me that one of his coworkers had discovered evidence U.S. Nobel Prize winners had fabricated data and were about to be defrocked. Last week, this friend told me this has indeed happened.

I can't find any public documentation to support this claim: Have any U.S. prize winners been stripped of their prizes lately?

If so, why the hush hush?

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Well, it couldn't be that "hush hush" if your friend knows. Ask him for the names!

I'm skeptical.

LiveScience.com: Relatives of Lobotomy Patients Want Nobel Prize Revoked

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The one and only case I have found was a Dutch Professor that expelled Jewish Faculty from the University because of Nazi laws during WWII. He had won the Chemistry Prize in 1936 and was dead when the prize was revoked.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Hmmmmmm. Now you mention it, I haven't seen Henry Kissinger for a while....

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

That's great Now that his arm bending tactics are well documented, that is a sadly ironic peace prize.

I have names, and institutions, but I am not comfortable making public accusations without some collaboration. My source is very confident, even to the point of saying an editor of a peer review journal has likely been replaced because he stonewalled pubishing the data. Most curious.

Oh, and it is clear from the context, Mother Teresa can be rules out.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Do you have a reference for this? I was curious about it, but through all the biographies I found, not one mentioned him being stripped of the prize. In fact, I found an article from this past April which briefly asks if the prize should be revoked.

The Nobel Foundation: All Prize Winners in Chemistry lists:
That doesn't look like revocation. Maybe he's on "double-secret probation".

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My understanding is that the Nobel Committee makes it very clear that Nobel prizes cannot be revoked. This has come up a lot in recent years due to some dispute over Peace Prize winners.

Now, gods know the science can be overturned, just as any other science can and a fair amount has. However, the Nobel Prize still stands. (Dead people can't win them, either, which is why Rosalind Franklin never got one.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I tend to think of the Nobels as a crock to begin with. People who should be recognized aren't, people who have been recognized who aren't deserving. And what did Nobel have against mathematicians?

According to This he simply did not care much for mathematics...

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

It is well known that Nobel prizes are not immune to politics.

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Hmmm, digging a little deeper it seems the pages I located first were mistaken. It seems that it wasn't his award that was removed, but an award given out with with his name on it that was stopped. Better details

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Presumably also Fischer Black, who died in 1995, and whose co-author Myron Scholes won the economics prize in 1997. Of course, economics isn't one of the real Nobels. . .

Really, what about Dag Hammarskjöld?

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

If one wanted to revoke Nobel's on personal rather than scientific grounds I can think of several examples. Philip Lenard and William Shockley come to mind in physics. However, the scientific work on which their prizes were based was sound.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

There's a difference between cannot and have not.

NobelPrize.org: Nomination Facts

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So, per your friend, which ones were they?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Then it would be more precise to say they can no longer win them (with a small exception) or, even better, that they cannot be nominated for one. Especially since in the Rosalind Franklin case came before the 1974 ruling. But, it is a pretty minor nit I guess.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

The prize is cash, but it may be reclaimable if research is found to be fraudulent.

I wish I were comfortable saying more: As everyone knows, if I think a research is poor or a theory shoddy, I don't hesitate to throw out salvo's - I think that is the way science should be: Everything should be challanged every time the data has to be bent about a new corner.

But I can't name names, if I do not have an observational justification for launching a public salvo.

There are at least three ways a prize winner could cross a forbidden boundary: If Data are faked, stretched or stolen. In the first two cases, there would be no way to collaborate the data unless the collaborator also pushed their pencil.

So check out the recent U.S. physics winners, and see if any of the awarded research is thin on collaboration. Sad day, if it turns out this is true.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Uh... do you mean corroboration? As in replication of results?

Or do you have some sort of problem with research involving single investigators?

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Cite? What contract do the winners sign that obligates them possibly to return the gift?

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Sorry Jerry, Put up or shut up. You're weaseling your way out answering a very direct question. What winner is a risk? What winner has had his prize revoked? Until you can answer these simple questions you have no right to be posting such accusations. They are nothing but unsubstantiated rumor and deserve to be treated as such.

The last American to win the prize in Physics outright is Kenneth Wilson in 1982 for his work on phase transitions. In Chemistry Ahmed Zewali in 1999. In Medicine Stanley Prusiner in 1997. Or maybe you're referring to Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments who won in 2000 for inventing the integrated circuit. We all know that TI couldn't have done that, right? Gee, maybe it's Hans Alfevin. That would put a spike in the EU type's wheels.

Anyway, enough irony. Until you can name names you're doing no better than Senator McCarthy and his "list of Communists in the State department." I invite you, and anyone else to check out the Nobel Prize web site and find any reference to procedures for revoking a prize, much less any reference to a prize that has recently been rescinded.

P.S. I do not accuse Jerry of McCarthyism here. I simply compare his evasion to that well known example.

P.P.S. The closest I've found is the 1992 Peace Prize where it appears that the winner may have "embellished" parts of her autobiography. The Nobel committee nonetheless "dismissed any suggestion that [they] should consider revoking the prize."

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

I'm no legal scholar, but when someone accepts a prize, they are certifying that their work is authentic. In any contest, if fraud is uncovered, all bets are off.

I feel a little silly, having started a thread and supplied no substance. However I would like it left open, because information will likely come along that will resolve this curious issue one way or another.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

It depends upon whether we are talking about conceptual or analytical papers. But yes, whenever data is collected, there is a much greater possibility that a single investigator made a mistake, or included a fudge factor, than more than one peer reviewed process. There is a lot of irreproducible data out there - I have generated some myself.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Nobel prizes are typically given many years after the publishing of the ideas for which the prize is given. In this time many other people have had time to review and expand on the idea and see it for its true value. The above mentioned award in economics to Sholes and Merton in 1997 was based on a paper published by Black and Sholes in 1973. This paper was based on research published earlier by Paul Samuelson who developed an options pricing model using binomial trees. Robert Merton greatly expanded on the Black/Sholes options pricing model to show how widely useful it is. These papers are the basis of modern options pricing and are studied to death as standard reading for Ph.D. classes in options.

This is the typical route for Nobel recipients. They are awarded prizes only after their ideas have been under scrutiny for years and have been shown to be of lasting and durable value. Not to say that mistakes and fraud couldn’t have occurred, but a process that looks at how influential an idea becomes in a given field eliminates much of the possibility fraud.

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

It's a non-issue when your posts consist of idle gossip. The only thing I find curious is your evasion.

And if I may add this quote from Jay's recent post in one of the 9/11 threads:
And to echo Eta C
Ever since the days of the Huygens probe, you've said little that would make me take you seriously. All I see here is shy innuendo and vague accusations.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

I am not involved in the legal profession, but I do know what this is called -- it is called "hearsay". And as most of us know, hearsay evidence is not admissible in a court of law. Case dismissed with prejudice!

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

In this case, no, it would not be admissible. However, hearsay has so many loopholes that Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter among other works and prosecutor of the Manson murderers, says the law might just as easily say that hearsay is admissible except under certain circumstances.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"