Nobel Jurors Facing Bribery Probe 74
RockDoctor writes "A report is circulating that in the run-up to the selection of prize-winners for 2006 and 2008, some members of the Nobel jury accepted an expenses-paid trip (or trips) to China to 'explain the selection process.' That's not, in itself, an incriminating event ('Is there something that we're doing incorrectly, or not doing?' is a valid question), and if there was dishonorable intent, it doesn't seem to have worked too well (the last Chinese Nobel Laureate was in 1957). There does seem to be embarrassment about falling into an obvious conflict-of-interest mantrap."
PhysOrg mentions that a corruption prosecutor is also looking into a Nobel-related sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company that was linked to one of the winners for this year's Medicine prize.
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Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
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Lets hold out some (false?) hope that it does not get as bad as the International Olympic Committee host country "Selection" process corruption [google.com]
I felt really sorry for all the French waiting out on the streets to celebrate London Vs Paris 2012 Olympic host "Selection" - it was so damn obvious they would not get it from the start. Your country defiantly don't get to host the Olympics for vocally opposing the Rape of Iraq - call it a political knuckle lashing punishment for not bending over, if you will. "Surp [foxnews.com]
Not to mention Hilleman (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman [wikipedia.org]
I mean how does a guy that does all that and is still having a huge effect today not win?
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Unfortunately, the Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, unless they died after the nomination process.
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NOBEL PROMOTES SCIENCE NOT PEOPLE (Score:3, Insightful)
NOBEL PROMOTES SCIENCE NOT PEOPLE!
AWARDS ARE SYMBOLIC PROMOTIONS of industries, careers, and/or ideals.
NOBEL is more important now more than ever; corrupt or not, we live in an age that idolizes karaoke singers, sports people, actors, and war heroes. Science types complain that we need science to be "cool" and well, this is about all we get.
If you want a wider reaching better award you should look at the "Alternative Nobel" http://www.rightlivelihood.org./ [www.rightlivelihood.org] This award promotes the important yet unrecognize
So wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
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The Nobel Jury awarded a peace prize to Fidel Castro. A peace prize for Fidel Castro is like a humanitarian award for Adolf Hitler. Fidel is a Marxist, and the stated goal of Marxists is using violent means to install world-wide Communism. Fidel Castro used military force to keep Cubans prisoner in Cuba, attempting to flee Cuba is punishable by death... how is that different from slavery?
Jimmy Carter was a clown... Not that he intended to be, he set out with good intentions. His fault was that he focus
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Fidel Castro has never received a Nobel peace price. [nobelpeaceprize.org]
Cuba placed a moratorium on the use of capital punishment in 2001
Castro has a great propaganda machine (Score:2)
Sorry, Castro was nominated for a Nobel, not awarded http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1225478.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Three Afro-Cuban men were executed for "illegal departure" in 2004 http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/04/11/cuba.execution [cnn.com]
Yes Cuba does execute political dissidents http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DC123FF931A15752C0A964958260 [nytimes.com]
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Actually, Marx merely postulated that revolution to overthrow oppression was inevitable, and that a classless society would also be inevitable. He never said that this was a way to "install world-wide Communism", merely that it was inevitable on a society-by-society basis.
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Hey - that's not fair! You're refuting the poster's claim by referring to the works in question, instead of simply making a knee-jerk, utterly uninformed ejaculation. That's debate, not invective! Why can't you bloody intellectuals stick with facts like the poster's assertion that the Iranian people would welcome an American invasion. They're practically certain to
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I take it that you are referring to Harold Pinter who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 the last male British writer to win this prize. This comment just shows how little you know about English literature. Pinter is indisputably the greatest living British playwright and in the view of many including myself, who has been seeing his plays since I was a child, the greatest living playwright in the English language.
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I take it that you are referring to Harold Pinter who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 the last male British writer to win this prize. This comment just shows how little you know about English literature. Pinter is indisputably the greatest living British playwright and in the view of many including myself, who has been seeing his plays since I was a child, the greatest living playwright in the English language. This indeed does qualify him as a leading contender for the prize which he so deservingly won.
The political controversy over the prize arose because while hospitalized by a serious infection he videotaped his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture "Art, Truth & Politics" from a wheelchair. It was a scathing attack on US war of aggression against Iraq. Any suggestion that the award was made for political reasons is both erroneous and unwarranted. The criticisms of Pinter were that he used his award as a vehicle to put forward his political views. But this comes from those whose job it is to viciously denounce anyone who condemns US foreign policy so in fact it is a compliment. What is a public intellectual for but to criticise the wrongdoings of those in power.
There's a trend with the Nobel committee to nominate people who are anti-American and anti-Zionist. This man fit the bill pretty well--a great writer and a Chomsky-esque, frothing at the mouth idiot.
Consider these pearls from his Nobel "speech" [yahoo.com], which had little to do with literature:
"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law."
"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass
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For the favor of a pint or two of a nice smokey Porter, perhaps, I could think up some nice awards for your excellency...
3..2..1..Que (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, and the word is cue.
I thought he was employing a little spanglish and asking a question. "Que Al Gore jokes and conspiracy theories?"
I get a story idea (Score:5, Funny)
How about a movie about that? Oh, and I already have the idea for the sequel. A movie about the movie about the hollywood conspiracy and how the movie didn't get a single Oscar nomination despite great reviews.
All rights reversed.
A joke! (Score:2)
Sounds like the jury got nobled!
No wait. Nobbled. The jury got nobbled. ...
Okay this joke didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.
So that's what they call it these days (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I "explained the selection process" to your mom last night. ;)
But really, there needs to be a bit more transparency for stuff like this.
Bah! Humbug. (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern "Portfolio" Theory has received at least three Nobels. [ft.com] Yet MPT has lead directly and predictably (no fat tails) to the financial crisis.
I'm very unimpressed and becoming highly cynical on what passes for "accepted science." There seems to be a strengthening political element. Quite obvious in the case of Global Warming.
Re:Bah! Humbug. (Score:4, Informative)
Modern "Portfolio" Theory has received at least three Nobels. Yet MPT has lead directly and predictably (no fat tails) to the financial crisis.
There is no "Nobel Prize" in economics. You've only got "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". As for the peace price, it has had its scope extended a bit - e.g. Al Gore. There's no doubt that setting focus on the problem of increased global warming caused by humans is important, and that this eventually will cause a many conflicts, wars and turmoils (scarcity of water, some countries being submerged etc...). But it's extremely proactive, and he didn't solve the problem - he just helped drawing people's attention to it.
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A hint: the place where you went wrong is the bit where you started thinking about Economics as a "science".
Things will start making a great deal more sense when you chuck it back into the "philosophy with practitioners who like to throw math around because it makes them feel rigorous" category.
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You've only got "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"
Right.. With a name like that I just can't understand why people would commonly refer to it as "The Nobel prize in Economics".
As for the peace prize, it has had its scope extended a bit
The peace prize has always been strange and political, and often not given to people who "solved the problem". Henry Kissinger got the thing in 1973.. not exactly a guy you associate with peace. Yassir Arafat got it in 1994.
I don't
Re:Bah! Humbug. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please note that economics is not a real Nobel Prize- it's an award that the bank which runs the Nobel fund decided to start giving out, and named it similarly. Probably due to fragile egos about not being real scientists.
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Probably due to fragile egos about not being real scientists.
Yeah, because "Peace" and "Literature" are both much more scientific than Economics. It also doesn't seem to bother the judges from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who choose the winners in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, and.. err.. Economics. How about that.
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Yeah, because "Peace" and "Literature" are both much more scientific than Economics. It also doesn't seem to bother the judges from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who choose the winners in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, and.. err.. Economics.
You're confusing the purpose (and selection) of the prize with the motivations of the contestants.
NOPE its much more conspiratorial (Score:2)
The bankers conspired to leverage the symbolic POWER of Nobel to promote their economic agenda to the world by creating a FAKE NOBEL for economics. The kind of economics that most benefit themselves (bankers) is their motivation in its creation and that bias remains in their selection of winners.
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Not scientists? Listen buddy - Go outside and ask a random person if they'd rather observe a Higgs boson or a million dollars in their bank account. And remember that to economists, a million dollars is never a significant figure.
Physicists have a good year when they can get a thousand observations of the value of c. Economists have a bad year if they only get a quadrillion observations of the value of a dollar.
If physicists want to run an experiment, they just have to manipulate a few particles. If eco
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Portfolio theory, as a theory, works remarkably well 99% of the time. Your argument is like complaining quantum physics should have no Nobel prizes because it doesn't explain dark matter.
Not what they used to be (Score:2)
We should do away with all awards and base everything on how much money corporations make, at least that way everyone's on the same page.
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Well there's an upside to Arafat winning (Score:1)
Because of that I've logically concluded that I am also a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Here's my proof
I've done nothing for peace
That's more than Arafat who's fought against peace
Arafat has won a peace prize
If an award was given to someone and someone else actually did more to deserve it then the other person must have won it as well
Therefore since I've done more for peace than Arafat has ever done I must also be a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
I still haven't gotten it yet though. (I've got 2 hypothesises
Not the same committee (Score:2)
Did somebody buy his award, or was the committee having a joke like when they gave awards to Kissinger and Arafat?
That's not the same committee as we are talking about here. The Norwegian parliament hands out the Peace Prize, the Swedes have all the others.
It's all explained here. [wikipedia.org]
Nothing to see here... move along. (Score:2, Informative)
Meh... the Swedes will launch a corruption investigation if a kid gets a penny toffee without paying for it.
And it's no secret that the selection committees have made mistakes in the past (the icepick lobotomy, anyone?) that only become clear with the benefit of hindsight.
In either case, never ascribe to corruption what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Re:Nothing to see here... move along. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, corruption in Sweden is low, and the tolerance for corruption is low, so it is not unusual for an investigation to be opened if there is just a slight chance there could be corruption.
This started with critical journalism at Sveriges Radio [www.sr.se] (in swedish). Because of the articles, the public prosecutor is now investigating.
Some of the articles are about the etical problems with Honeywell sponsoring. This is not illegal, and I do not think this is being investigated.
The trips to China are being investigated, but I think this will end with the travelers being freed of all accusations.
More problematic is the role of Astra Zeneca. They are also sponsors. And Bo Angelin, who is in the committee that awarded the price in medicine to Harald zur Hausen is also on the board of Astra Zeneca. Harald zur Hausen got the price for research that has been patented by Astra Zeneca.
Nobel Prize has been trouble since its origins (Score:1)
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Wow, I had no idea! Thanks for educating me. I just lost all respect for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Links for the lazy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_Laureates [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger#Accusations_of_war_crimes_and_legal_difficulties [wikipedia.org]
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Minor nitpick: Ahtisaari is Finnish, not Norwegian.
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As someone mentioned above the judges that went to China was for "medicine, chemistry and physics committees", not peace. RTA
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Steve MacIntyre = Hockey player
Steve McIntyre = Scientist
Ok, let's get it out there... (Score:2, Insightful)
The last people we'd expect bribery and government corruption from is China, right? /sarcasm
But... who better to explain how to win a Nobel prize than members of the Nobel selection committee? Obviously, this could be misconstrued as a conflict of interest, but this sounds more like information gathering than anything all that nefarious.
China's government is obviously interested in stepping up it's cultural and political clout in the world. That's what hosting the Olympics are all about for them (and Gove
The Nobel Prize is awarded by humans after all (Score:1)