The Nobel Prize - with smile: deep secrets behind the façade
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PRESS RELEASE by Jan Charles Biro MD. PhD:
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Honorary Professor at the Karolinska Institute
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The Nobel Prize - with smile: deep secrets behind the façade
(MMD Newswire) December 9, 2009 -- The Nobel ceremony will take place tomorrow on 10th December, 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden. There are deep secrets behind the façade of the famous Nobel Prize, the dream of every young scientist.
A Jewish scientist has 100 times larger chance to receive this prize than a gentile one. This bias is a violation of Nobel's will and testament. The Swedes don't care. They like Marx, but not Nobel; titles and prizes are hated and ridiculed in this Nordic, almost communistic country. However the prize-giving ceremony is the only occasion for the Swedish King to feel like a King and they think that Sweden (a cold, dark, little and unknown country) needs this "fancy ceremony" to get a one-day-fame from the rest of the world.
jan c biro
Biro - who is honorary professor at the Karolinska Institute (appointer of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology) since 1985 - gives an insider's view.
History
Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each Prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a cash award.
The Prize became widely appreciated by the world's scientists and is regarded as the most prestigious award of its kind. Prizes usually benefit not only the laureates but also the donors. Alfred Nobel secured his immortality by his nice positive donation, an immortality that he probably wouldn't have been able to achieve with his invention, dynamite, which was the source of his wealth.
Nobel was born in 1833 in Stockholm, but he didn't spend too much time in Sweden. He experimented with nitroglycerine (blasting oil) and patented dynamite in 1867. (Dynamite is nitroglycerin, an oily liquid, solidified by some absorbent and more stable than the blasting oil). Nobel lost his brother and business partner in 1864 in an explosion and he became the sole patent owner and a wealthy man. He never married and had no family of his own.
In his last will and testament (1895), he wrote that much of his fortune was to be used to give prizes to those who have done their best for humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. He died in 1896 in Italy.
His Prize survived many obstacles, starting with opposition from his distant relatives, how to move the money to Sweden, whether it should be a Swedish or an international prize. The Prize-giving capital was badly mismanaged during 1920-1980 and lost 3/4th of its original value, but regained it. The controversies around the Prize are numerous: many want to get it but only a few receive it.
Benefits & Controversies
What is this Prize actually about? This is meant to be a serious recognition of the greatest scientific achievements and to focus attention, for a short time, on "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
It sounds irresistible, doesn't it? This text touches the center of the heart of every scientist, especially those coming from the old schools, where individual talent and intellectual brilliance are the key to great achievements. This is great.
The Prize is meant to remember Alfred Nobel, the great donor, in a positive way and not as "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before". This is very nice.
The Prize is meant to give Sweden, the country, the King, and everybody who counts in that country an opportunity to gather and have a good "party in the window". The Prize-giving ceremony is a Swedish signature show, one of the most important for keeping that little country on the map.
Let me have a look on the monetary side of receiving and donating this Prize. The Prize money was no more than ~ 20,000 USD per unshared Prize (real value in 2007) until 1970 (mismanaged price stock), but increased successfully and reached 1M$ in 2008. That is a significant sum of money for most scientists. However, the character of research has changed a lot (in medicine, chemistry and physics): most research is done by large teams with a lot of instrumentation. Those few scientists who are able to reach the Nobel Prize level are already parts of a successful money-making team, which makes them already rather well paid before they receive the Prize.
Laureates in literature have probably already written best-selling books.
The real Prize money comes later, after the Nobel ceremony, and not from the Foundation. Money follows the Prize-winner in the form of grants and contracts with industry and publishers. This is the real money and it is canalized to the laureate's institute, university or other organization. The presence of a laureate in an organization ensures a lot of good will towards that organization.
One such benefit, for example, is that publication in prestigious journals is usually simple and uncomplicated if there is a laureate's name on the author list. (Practically no peer review and colleagues go down on their knees, at least for 10-15 years). There are great institutions that are very successful in picking up laureates and prospering from the benefits of their presence; one might mention Berkeley and Harvard among universities or the Salk Institute among industry-oriented actors.
An interesting phenomenon is manifest here: the interference between economic interests of groups and organizations behind the (potential) Prize recipient on the one hand, and Nobel's will and the will's executors (Nobel Committee, donors) on the other.
How do these two interests work together? The laureates are chosen by humans and not by a computer and humans are manipulable by other humans. Nomination for the Nobel Prize is in principle a fair procedure. Each year the respective Nobel Committees send individual invitations to thousands of members of academies, university professors, scientists from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others, asking them to submit candidates for the Nobel Prizes for the coming year. These nominators are chosen in such a way that as many countries and universities as possible are represented over time. However, does it work fairly at the end of the selection procedure?
I am not the first to ask this question. Every single year brings out serious criticisms of some decisions. The critics are usually ignored by the Committee as scientific jealousy, rightly in most cases. It is almost impossible to decide who "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" in a particular year, because there are many beneficial areas of research and there are many brilliant people behind each project.
However, there is a statistic, provided by the privileged group itself, which provides clear-cut evidence that the outcome of the Nobel Prize nomination is manipulated and the results are strongly biased.
At least 178 Jews and persons of half or three-quarters Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 23% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2008, and constituting 37% of all US recipients during the same period. In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine and Physics, the corresponding world and US percentages are 27% and 40%, respectively. (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world's population and 2% of the US population.)
• Chemistry (30 prize winners, 20% of world total, 28% of US total)
• Economics (26 prize winners, 42% of world total, 56% of US total)
• Literature (13 prize winners, 12% of world total, 27% of US total)
• Peace (9 prize winners, 9% of world total, 10% of US total)3
• Physics (47 prize winners, 26% of world total, 37% of US total)
• Physiology or Medicine (53 prize winners, 28% of world total, 41% of US total)
(From
Jewish Nobel Prize Winners)
What does this mean? That 23% of all Nobel laureates are Jews in a world where the percentage of Jewish persons is 0.25% means close to a 100-fold over-representation. Nothing to be overexcited about; male laureates are also strongly over-represented compared to females, Europeans and Americans are over-represented compared to Africans, and there are more Christian than Muslim Prize winners. These biases are well known and satisfactorily explained by cultural, traditional and economic differences. However, looking at (say) the Jew/non-Jew ratio for laureates from the same country will eliminate cultural and economic bias. The 37% Jews from America, where the frequency is around 2%, gives around a 15-times average (108 years) over-representation of Jews. This statistical picture becomes even more bizarre if we separate the pre- and post Second World War periods. This shows a 2-3 times greater over-representation in 1943-2008 than in 1901-1940, giving around a 20-fold overrepresentation of the Jewish laureates from the USA during the past five decades.
Please don't forget that over-representation of one group is always coupled to the under-representation of another.
I find this statistical bias rather disturbing for two reasons. Both are related to the well known formulation of Nobel's testament. First, the Prize should be given to persons... "who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". Is it possible that the Jewish contribution to human benefit is 100 times as great as that of the rest of the world, or 20 times as great as the rest of American scientists and artists, and that this contribution became 2-3 times greater during the 2nd World War, when at the same time 6 million Jews lost their lives (which was ~ 1/3rd of all Jews)? Second, Nobel's testament very strongly prohibits any kind of national or racial discrimination and states that "It is my [Nobel's] expressed wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize ..." (
Excerpt from the Will of Alfred Nobel).
Are the Jews a Nation? The traditional explanation, and the one given in the Torah, is that the Jews are a nation. The Hebrew word, believe it or not, is "goy." The Torah and the rabbis used this term not in the modern sense meaning a territorial and political entity, but in the ancient sense meaning a group of people with a common history, a common destiny, and a sense that they are all connected to each other.
Judaism 101: What Is Judaism?
The Jewish dominance of the Nobel Prize is an obvious violation of Nobel's will.
It is not my intention to deep-analyze this bias; that would be a long historical story. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that Nobel and his Prize, which put and keep Sweden on the map, have absolutely nothing to do with Swedish science, not even with the possibility of a positive attitude to science and the prosperity of humankind. The Nobel Prize today is a strongly biased and manipulated (Jewish) prize that gives some superficial benefits to the country and some occasion for the Royal family to feel, once in the year, like a royal family. The Swedish learned to hate titles and prizes (politically incorrect) and don't care or understand such nice words as "benefiting humankind".
Jan Charles Biro MD. PhD
Honorary Professor at the Karolinska Institute
CEO Homulus Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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