Sep 27 2011

That Nobel time of year

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The Nobel Prizes start getting awarded next week, so now is the time to make your predictions in a contest to win an iPad2. I’m afraid, though, I’ve already got a lock on it: I’m predicting that Walt Brown and Bob Enyart, the most brilliant scientific minds ever, are going to win it this year.

There is a Nobel for inanity, isn’t there?

(Also on Sb)

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34 comments

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1

Gnumann

27 September 2011 at 6:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Haaarrruki Murakami!

Oh…

No literature?

*sad puppy eyes*
2

Glen Davidson

27 September 2011 at 6:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m afraid, though, I’ve already got a lock on it: I’m predicting that Walt Brown and Bob Enyart, the most brilliant scientific minds ever, are going to win it this year.

Operations by the Worldwide Darwinist Conspiracy have already kicked in to continue the injustice of depriving them of the Nobel prize. Just think, they cut through all that observation and experimentation crap, and realized that the Bible and “it looks to me like” are all that you need to do science.

We don’t dare allow such brilliance to be recognized and rewarded.

Glen Davidson
3

Alan Henness

27 September 2011 at 6:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Surely it’s time for Samuel Hahnemann to win the chemistry prize? Or physics. Or biology???
4

Lagerbaer

27 September 2011 at 6:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Last year’s physics was condensed matter, the one before was an application, so I suppose this year’s will be astronomy/cosmology/high energy.

Or condensed matter again for DMFT.
5

Zeno

27 September 2011 at 6:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m predicting that Walt Brown and Bob Enyart, the most brilliant scientific minds ever, are going to win it this year.

PZ is confusing the Nobel prizes with the IgNobel prizes again.
6

sundiver

27 September 2011 at 7:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Zeno: The Ignoble Prizes are awarded to people with a sense of humor…
7

Jason

27 September 2011 at 7:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I feel like Yamanaka, Gurdon and Jaenisch for their work in iPS cells (though Jaenisch might get left off, I don’t know how these politics divide out)?
8

'Tis Himself, OM

27 September 2011 at 7:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I predict I will not win the Economics Prize this year.

I haz a sad.
9

Gnumann

27 September 2011 at 7:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I predict I will not win the Economics Prize this year.

Is it any consolation that it’s a fake nobel?
10

Randomfactor

27 September 2011 at 7:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Will this be the year they finally announce the Nobel for atheism?
11

myeck waters

27 September 2011 at 7:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Never mind a sense of humor, even the IgNobel winners have to published some actual research data.
12

Bill Door

27 September 2011 at 7:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David Baker, Chemistry, for protein structure prediction/design.
Ad Bax deserves one as well, but it’s not likely.
Carlos Bustamante for single-molecule biophysics.
13

EvoMonkey

27 September 2011 at 7:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Clearly, Michele Bachman deserves the Nobel Prize for Anti-science for saving 11-12 year old girls from mental retardation due to the HPV vaccine.
14

feralboy12, der Ken-Puppe Sie außerhalb in 1983 verlassen

27 September 2011 at 8:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Have I been passed over again? But I make up sciency stuff all the time!

Ah well, screw it. Nobel invented dynamite. I don’t want his blood money. (Faint scent of sour grapes wafts over thread)
15

Vicki

27 September 2011 at 8:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

People have “won” IgNobels for real-world actions in the past: for example, in 1994,

Economics: Awarded to Juan Pablo Davila, former employee of the state-owned company Coldelco. Davila’s Ig was awarded for instructing his computer to “buy” when he meant “sell.” The ultimate consequence was the loss of 0.5 percent of the gross national product. In Chile “davilar” is now a verb meaning “to botch things up royally.”

(Summary found at frivolity.com)

Then again, that was back when the awards were tagged as being for research that should not be repeated, rather than the current “makes you laugh and then makes you think.”
16

Mike

27 September 2011 at 8:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Tony Pawson for discovering the SH2 domain? John Dick for cancer stem cells?

I’m just pulling for some local folks.
17

Richard Smith

27 September 2011 at 9:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Vicki (#15}:

One of my favourite IgNobels for research that should not be repeated has to be from 1992:

Archaeology – Eclaireurs de France (a French Scouting organization), removers of graffiti, for damaging the prehistoric paintings of two Bisons in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel
18

russellseitz

27 September 2011 at 9:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Way a Nobel for Inanity when its already been awarded ( To a Gomez Adamms lookalike named Egas-Moniz, in 1949 ) for Lobotomy

Brown and Enyart look like prime candidates for the procedure
19

A3Kr0n

27 September 2011 at 9:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why not Walt Brown and Bob Enyart? After I saw Obama get the Peace Prize my respect for the Nobel Prizes has been in question.
20

Gnumann

27 September 2011 at 9:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why not Walt Brown and Bob Enyart? After I saw Obama get the Peace Prize my respect for the Nobel Prizes has been in question.

The thing to remember is that the peace prize is handed out by Norwegian politicians, while the other ones are handed out by Swedish scientists. Apart from the source of the grant and the name they have nothing in common (and of course, that the one in economics isn’t really a nobel prize)
21

'Tis Himself, OM

27 September 2011 at 10:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

the one in economics isn’t really a nobel prize

I can’t even win a fake Nobel.

Boo hoo!
22

Peter Tibbles

27 September 2011 at 10:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It’s about time Don Metcalf and Jacques Miller won it.
23

ChasCPeterson

27 September 2011 at 11:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Not as funny now that ‘Tis has already been here but:

There is a Nobel for inanity, isn’t there?

You mean Economics?
[padump tchhhhhhh]

After I saw Obama get the Peace Prize my respect for the Nobel Prizes has been in question.

Obama? They gave the damn thing to fucking Kissinger!
24

DLC

28 September 2011 at 1:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Those two dummies don’t even rate an Ignobel prize. At least the Igs winners actually did something.
25

Markita Lynda, healthcare is a damn right.

28 September 2011 at 1:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Who’s getting the Japan prize?
26

Chris Booth

28 September 2011 at 2:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Walt Brown and Bob Enyart to win the Nobel Prize? AGAIN?!?
27

Phalacrocorax, not a particularly smart avian

28 September 2011 at 2:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Vicki quotes:

Economics: Awarded to Juan Pablo Davila, former employee of the state-owned company Coldelco. Davila’s Ig was awarded for instructing his computer to “buy” when he meant “sell.” The ultimate consequence was the loss of 0.5 percent of the gross national product. In Chile “davilar” is now a verb meaning “to botch things up royally.”

You forgot to tell the punchline: he’s a pastor now.
28

Charlie Foxtrot

28 September 2011 at 4:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I thought ‘Lord’ Monckton was a shoe-in?
29

John Morales

28 September 2011 at 8:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

[OT]

Gnumann, I tried so hard to get into Kafka on the Shore, given its glowing reviews.

(I failed)
30

karimghantous

28 September 2011 at 11:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Will this be the year they finally announce the Nobel for atheism?

That would come under theology, but there isn’t a theology prize. However, it could come under the literature prize (i.e. a book about atheism could win).

P.S. Perhaps my definition of science is strict (the study of nature) but I have no time for the idea that economics is a science, even though the prize in economics it isn’t a real Nobel.
31

Louis

28 September 2011 at 2:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why not Walt Brown and Bob Enyart? After I saw Obama get the Peace Prize my respect for the Nobel Prizes has been in question.

The thing to remember is that the peace prize is handed out by Norwegian politicians, while the other ones are handed out by Swedish scientists. Apart from the source of the grant and the name they have nothing in common (and of course, that the one in economics isn’t really a nobel prize)

Norwegian? Hardly. Obama’s Peace Prize was a Brazilian affair. After all, the award was made for America not having Bush….

….thank yew, thank yew. I’m all weak here. Try your waitress. Tip the veal.

Louis

P.S. [Serious Face] Chemistry prize to either the spectroscopists Zare and Moehner, or (my preference) the bioinorganic people Gray, Lippard and Holm.
32

Bill Door

28 September 2011 at 10:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

#31 Louis
Not sure about the others, but Harry Gray needs a fuckin’ Nobel. He should have got one with Rudolph Marcus in 1992.
33

Sam Salerno

29 September 2011 at 3:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You can all say what you want. Ken Hamm still has not received his nobel for his scientific genius on the age of the earth. It’s been verifiably proven that PZ Myers himself has road a dinosaur.
34

restaurante

3 November 2011 at 11:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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