# Can a Nobel Prize be taken away? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 7, 2017, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280 "2017-02-07T22:17:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/1 "2017-02-07T22:17:16Z")
I’ve just watched a documentary on Walter Freeman, the famous (or infamous) advocate and practitioner of lobotomy in the mid-20th century. The documentary mentioned that [António Egas Moniz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Egas_Moniz), the Portuguese originator of the procedure, received a Nobel Prize in 1949 “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (ie lobotomy) in certain psychoses.” I found this astonishing. This barbaric operation turned people into vegetables and was completely repudiated by medical science in the 1960s and yet this man gets a Nobel Prize for developing it? Is there a mechanism by which a Nobel can be withdrawn if it turns out that it was awarded for junk science? As far as I can tell Moniz still has his prize and that just seems wrong on so many levels. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/2 "2017-02-07T22:24:52Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Is there a mechanism by which a Nobel can be withdrawn if it turns out that it was awarded for junk science? No, a Nobel Prize cannot be revoked. [http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel\_prizes/faq.html](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/faq.html) ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/3 "2017-02-07T22:25:36Z")
[From here.](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1949/moniz-article.html) > [@](#): > > In 1936, the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz introduced a surgical operation, prefrontal leukotomy, which after an initial period came to be used particularly in the treatment of schizophrenia. The operation, later called lobotomy, consisted in incisions that destroyed connections between the prefrontal region and other parts of the brain. > > **At that time there did not exist any effective treatment whatsoever for schizophrenia, and the leukotomy managed at least to make life more endurable for the patients and their surroundings.** The treatment became rather popular in many countries all over the world and Moniz received the Nobel Prize in 1949. > > However, by this time the treatment had had its most successful period and in 1952 the first drug with a definite effect on schizophrenia was introduced, chlorpromazine, our first neuroleptic drug. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/4 "2017-02-07T22:50:56Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I found this astonishing. This barbaric operation turned people into vegetables and was completely repudiated by medical science in the 1960s and yet this man gets a Nobel Prize for developing it? The procedure was “completely repudiated” by medical science because better alternatives came along, beginning with thorazine in 1952. In the heyday of lobotomy in the 1940s, these better alternatives mostly didn’t exist. There were no anti-psychotic medications; severely agitated patients ended up in long-term confinement in overcrowded mental asylums, not infrequently chained to a wall or a bed to keep them from hurting themselves or others. Not everybody ended up a vegetable: at least a few of the patients treated by Moniz and his contemporaries were able to return to work. Walter Freeman, the American popularizer of the procedure, had much looser standards than Moniz, and his assembly-line process produced worse results. He didn’t focus his efforts on the severely mentally ill, either, and would lobotomize people merely because their family thought they were defiant or difficult. One doctor’s abuse, however, does not necessarily negate another doctor’s work. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/5 "2017-02-07T22:54:59Z")
Monitz has been dead for 60+ years now, so I doubt that he would care if they take his Nobel Prize away. But seriously, this is not how science works. The concept of ‘junk science’ is just not scientific. at all. Science works by scientists coming up with theories to explain physical phenomena, and to predict reactions to stimulus, and to devise experiments to test those predictions. Thus science is full of ‘half-baked’ ideas. Then the ‘3/4th-baked’ idea that replaced that idea. Then the idea that is currently accepted as being correct – or the most correct so far. There are probably a lot of Noble prize ideas that have been succeeded by more detailed explanations. Einsteins Special Relativity replaced Newton’s Laws, and then Einstein replaced his own theory with his General Relativity theory. And now String theory & Quantum Mechanics seem to be supplanting some of General Relativity. And so it goes. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/6 "2017-02-07T23:34:43Z")
Not the only Nobel Prize in medicine for something we wouldn’t do today. Julius Wagner-Jauregg won for using malaria to treat insanity caused by syphilis (the syphilis was more deadly than the malaria). Paul Mueller won for using DDT to fight malaria. We know how that turned out – so far. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/7 "2017-02-07T23:42:44Z")
I have this book but haven’t started reading it yet. (Paid 12 1/2 cents for it too, at a thrift store that was selling all books 2 for a quarter! 🆒 ) I also saw the author interviewed on C-SPAN 2’s “About Books”, and in the Q&A, someone asked her if lobotomies are still performed. She said that they are, and in the U.S., it may only be performed on people for whom literally everything else has completely failed, and goes through multiple layers of medical ethicists beforehand. In addition, no involved entity can be paid in any way for the procedure. A neurosurgeon she interviewed for the book said that he had done it twice. > **[Amazon.com: Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter: 9780544811904: Kate Clifford...](https://www.amazon.com/Rosemary-Daughter-Kate-Clifford-Larson/dp/0544811909)** > > Amazon.com: Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter: 9780544811904: Kate Clifford Larson: Books If Nobel Prizes could be revoked, they probably would have yanked Carleton Gajdusek’s before anybody else’s, because he was a convicted child molester. > **[Daniel Carleton Gajdusek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Carleton_Gajdusek#Child_molestation_allegations)** > > Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (/ˈɡaɪdəʃɛk/ GHY-də-shek; September 9, 1923 – December 12, 2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of kuru, implying the existence of an infectious agent, which he named an 'unconventional virus'. > In 1996, Gajdusek was charged with child molestation and, after being convicted, spent 12 months in prison before entering a... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2017, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/8 "2017-02-08T00:07:52Z")
There have been plenty of questionable Peace Prize recipients, too. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2017, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-nobel-prize-be-taken-away/779280/9 "2017-02-08T00:27:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There have been plenty of questionable Peace Prize recipients, too. I voted for Obama both times, and his is one of them, not because he got it, but because of the timing. He’d just been elected the first time.