DailyDirt: Winning A Nobel Prize And Thinking Differently
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
A fairly sizable list of Nobel laureates suffer from Nobel disease -- a phenomenon in which respected scientists publicly espouse somewhat crazy ideas. Perhaps just being famous also causes this affliction...? Or maybe there should be more research on this topic, worthy of an Ig Nobel award. In any case, here are a few links on some Nobel prize winners that demonstrate these people are still human.- Nobel laureate James Watson, famous for eludicating the helical structure of DNA, recently auctioned off his medal for over $4 million. The winning bid came from Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov who says he'll return the medal to Watson. [url]
- Nobel laureates in Chemistry seem to like giving advice to others. Ada Yonath had some sage advice: "Go into science if you are curious and have passion for it. If not, find something else." [url]
- Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993, supported research suggesting that AIDS is not caused by HIV. The scientific evidence is overwhelming against the assertion that HIV and AIDS are unrelated, but Mullis isn't convinced. [url]
- Linus Pauling won not just one, but TWO Nobel prizes. However, these credentials didn't prevent him from spouting some crazy unsupported statements, such as asserting that megadoses of vitamin C can prevent colds and death from cancers. [url]
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Filed Under: james watson, kary mullis, linus pauling, megadose, nobel disease, nobel prize, vitamin c
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Wording
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Re: Wording
Go and look at the annals of history where more than plenty of great inventors were scoffed at and resisted by the scientific community... prompting this old saying.
Science progresses one funeral at a time.
Or better yet...
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
~Max Planck
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What you seem to be saying
Just curious.
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Re: What you seem to be saying
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Re: Re: What you seem to be saying
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Re: Re: Re: What you seem to be saying
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truth by consensus always ends well
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Watson
E.g. a review of the evidence is here: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
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no bell prize?
Other than melting down the gold trophy why should anyone care about recipients 'accomplishments'?
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You have people that buy their way in, people that are awarded just to make a political statement.
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Linus Pauling
Intellectual integrity is truly a rare thing.
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Quackery
Now if you look at the average life span of doctors, they live a few years less than the average person. Meanwhile all of the doctors I've been able to find that took 1 gram or more vit c till the end, lived on average about 9 years longer than the average person. Guess who's advice I'm going to take.
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