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Committee Lowers Nobel Prize Award
Snirt writes "The Nobel Committee has chosen to lower this year's Nobel prize winnings by two million kronor ($283,030) due to turbulence in the current economic climate.
The prize now stands at 8 million kronor, down from the 10 million of 2011.
'The reason behind this
decision is that the financial
markets are really unstable and there are reasons to suspect that this turbulence will continue for a while still,' said Lars Heikensten, head of the Nobel Committee, to the TT
news agency. 'Long term, we aim to raise the figure, even though we think that the Nobel Prize's value should lie in the prize
itself and not the prize money,' he said. While Heikensten admits that it was a 'tough decision' to cut the prize money, he told the news agency that it's not the first time the prize sum has been altered, adding that it has been lowered and raised several times over the past few years."
The economics "Nobel" is separately administrated, and not funded by the Nobel estate.
They are completely irrelevant, at least to people who understand that this is all politics and nothing else. Obama has gotten his for 'peace' and Krugman has gotten his for 'economics'.
Unlike the other prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded by the Swedish Nobel institute, but by Norway.
In general, the Swedish prizes are awarded as a recognition for past work, while the Peace Price is just as often meant as an incentive.
So very different politics are at play.
besides that, the Nobel is awarded for a specific piece of work in science or economics. It's not supposed to reward a long illustrious career, it's about a specific piece of work with lasting impact. Granted in physics especially it tends towards people with long illustrious careers.
Krugman happens to have had a good track record on economic theory. But just as easily he could be a complete trainwreck on macroeconomic theory but have very correctly described one specific phenomena. That would still warrant a nobel prize. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/krugman.html specifically lists what his prize is for.
I remember a few years ago UBC was looking to hire a nobel in physics. I don't know if they got him, but that's immaterial. His nobel was in some actual physics research, but everything he was doing at that point was about innovation in teaching physics.
You can write one ground breaking science paper, and then be a complete loon for the rest of your career, as long as that specific paper is sound you can still theoretically be considered.
So you could have done for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/ and think it's only worth a dollar?
or:
for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2010/
How about "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/
maybe "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"." (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2010/)
Maybe something so fundamentally pointless as "for the development of in vitro fertilization" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2010/
or how about something that no one would ever use like ", one half awarded to Charles Kuen Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication", the other half jointly to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor"." http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2009/
Because you know.. those achievements are low standards. Cutting the prize money is unlikely to matter much. By the time people get it they are either young enough that the real money is in speaking fees and in the huge salary boost they get, or old enough their estate planning is already done and adding more to it is giving money to their kids or charity.
When you develop a cure for aids, develop a quantum computer that can actually solve a meaningful problem, find a way to replace the government in north korea and china with ones that respect human rights, or lift a couple of billion people out of poverty, then you get to claim the nobel prize is worthless. Until then, you're talking out of your ass.
The so-called Nobel Prize in economics isn't really a Nobel prize like the one say in Chemistry. It's a prize started by the banksters running the Nobel foundation much later. The complete name is something like "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".
It's shenanigans.