HIV
The Nobel prize was awarded to the charming and dimpled Montagnier for discovering ‘HIV’; although he didn’t actually show that it existed nor that it caused disease. Montagnier admitted that good nutrition could both provent and cure AIDS. He did, however, still generate $tillions for big pharma.
CJD
The Nobel prize was also given to Prusiner for his work on prions; the 'i' stands for infectious proteins which have never been shown to be infectious. He did generate £trillions for pharma in testing and research.
Helicobacter pylori
It was given to Barry Marshall for helicobacter that wasn’t shown to cause ulcers; generating $trillions in testing and treatment
The Black Death
Alexandre Yersin was nominated for the Nobel prize for culturing Yersina pestis which was said to be the cause of the Black Death, although there's no evidence that it was; paving the way for all plague and pandemic scares and yet more $trillions ever since.
Massively underplaying the impacts of the climate crisis
William Nordhaus was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on calculating the impacts of climate change. He claims—still—that a rise in average temperature of 3 degrees would only cause a 2% fall in GDP because most industries operate indoors. Nordhaus equated climate change (and devastating agricultural failure, migration and war) to the weather, and won the most esteemed prize in academia for his efforts. This enabled hydrocarbon, animal ag and pharma cartels to continue to simultaneously pollute and make $trillions.
The PCR
So, the major outlier is of course Kary Mullis, to whom they really had to give it for this incredibly useful amplification technique, though I bet they really didn't want to! The PCR being used as a ‘test’ for a non-existent disease must have got him turning in his grave.
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They gave Mullis the prize for the PCR in order to encourage its widespread use and validate it for the planned purpose of using it as a diagnostic tool for planned BS like HIV or Covid “ Diagnosis” even when they knew it was not nor ever could be an accurate tool for diagnosis.
Dear Jo,
One thing that you might want to consider on this topic is: has science run its course? Physics, for instance, is granting Nobels for either irrelevancies (Penrose's admitted, but inconsequential, mathematical brilliance) or banalities (this year's crop who worked on 'entanglement' -- a worthy topic, to be sure, but a vestige of what makes quantum mechanics, say, 'magical', if you want to think about it that way).
You've seen yourself that at least some (most?) of the medical/biological Nobels are, say, suspect.
Chemistry might be on slightly stronger ground, because of its links to engineering -- but if you look at your life, do you really feel that a new 'product' is going to make things more visceral/worthy?
I note that your main picture shows you in a Yoga pose. Evidently, Yoga adds something to your life. Do you need a scientific procedure to 'prove' that to you?
Science is a certain sort of epistemology that's exceedingly good at getting at the truth of certain repeatable things (like electricity). But I venture to say that the important questions of humanity are far divorced from scientific statements.
All I want to know: does my cat love me as much as my girlfriend does?
ShiYen