# Excluding Lit or Peace, have there ever been any of the Nobel Prizes that were duds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 12, 2013, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502 "2013-04-12T14:22:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/1 "2013-04-12T14:22:37Z")
“Dud” meaning, in hindsight it was a mistake on scientific reasons, a case of, simply, :smack: Hva skulle vi tenker? I’m not sure if I should exclude Economics also, as interpretations can be simply too critical (but not as absurd as the Peace Prizes). ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/2 "2013-04-12T14:34:23Z")
In b4 everyone else [cuts up your brain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy). ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/3 "2013-04-12T15:05:51Z")
I think I have a different definition of dud based on who got awards but didn’t really do Nobel worthy research. Anton Hewitt: Not only did NOT do the work leading to the discovery of pulsars, he belittled Jocelyn Bell’s work. He basically got the award for being her grad advisor. Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson: Discovered the microwave background radiation of the universe. Should have been given to Alpher and Herman (and both were alive when it was discovered so they were eligible) for doing all of the theoretical work. All Penzias and Wilson did was clean up bird shit and say, “Maybe this is that thing those guys wrote about.” James Watson & Francis Crick: What did they do that was original? DNA had long been know to be the factor of inheritence (Avery in 1944 based on Griffith’s work in 1928. THAT deserved a Nobel Prize) and they stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and theories that unlocked the whole “double-helix”. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/4 "2013-04-12T16:29:23Z")
The entire Economics category is and has always been essentially bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/5 "2013-04-12T16:56:08Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I think I have a different definition of dud based on who got awards but didn’t really do Nobel worthy research. > > Anton Hewitt: Not only did NOT do the work leading to the discovery of pulsars, he belittled Jocelyn Bell’s work. He basically got the award for being her grad advisor. I think you are right on this… > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson: Discovered the microwave background radiation of the universe. Should have been given to Alpher and Herman (and both were alive when it was discovered so they were eligible) for doing all of the theoretical work. All Penzias and Wilson did was clean up bird shit and say, “Maybe this is that thing those guys wrote about.” ..and this, except wasn’t it Gamow rather than Warren? In any case it was even worse for Penzias and Wilson than you describe- they had no idea what they were looking at until cued in by physicists Robert Dicke and James Peebles at nearby Princeton, who had rediscovered Alpher and Gamow’s work, and were unknowingly in a neck and neck race with P&W for observational confirmation. > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > James Watson & Francis Crick: What did they do that was original? DNA had long been know to be the factor of inheritence (Avery in 1944 based on Griffith’s work in 1928. THAT deserved a Nobel Prize) and they stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and theories that unlocked the whole “double-helix”. This is untrue, and reflects charges made by partisans of Franklin rather than Franklin herself, and Franklin, no shrinking violet, could have been expected to stand up for herself. Also, the key insight obtained by Watson and Crick pertained to discovery of the _structure_ of DNA rather than its _function_ (although function was clarified by knowledge of structure). Franklin did perform brilliant experimental work which was certainly critical to Watson and Crick’s discovery, and a case might be made for awarding her colaureateship. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/6 "2013-04-12T16:59:26Z")
[The Master Speaks.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2701/ignobel-has-the-nobel-prize-ever-been-awarded-in-error) Short answer: No, although in retrospect Moniz’s prize for the invention of lobotomy (mentioned above) looks kind of dubious today. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/7 "2013-04-12T17:15:44Z")
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/8 "2013-04-12T17:18:38Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was a joke. The OP excluded Literature and Peace prizes, which tend to be more subjective. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/9 "2013-04-12T17:20:07Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > This is untrue, and reflects charges made by partisans of Franklin rather than Franklin herself, and Franklin, no shrinking violet, could have been expected to stand up for herself. Also, the key insight obtained by Watson and Crick pertained to discovery of the _structure_ of DNA rather than its _function_ (although function was clarified by knowledge of structure). > > Franklin did perform brilliant experimental work which was certainly critical to Watson and Crick’s discovery, and a case might be made for awarding her colaureateship. Watson and Crick’s work was pedestrian compared to Franklin’s groundbreaking observational data. Any competent scientists could have filled in the blanks. The ones that did just happened to be Watson and Crick. She was too busy photographing Bigfoot to engage in gross anatomy of the photos. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/10 "2013-04-12T17:20:50Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > This is untrue, and reflects charges made by partisans of Franklin rather than Franklin herself, and Franklin, no shrinking violet, could have been expected to stand up for herself. Also, the key insight obtained by Watson and Crick pertained to discovery of the _structure_ of DNA rather than its _function_ (although function was clarified by knowledge of structure). > > Franklin did perform brilliant experimental work which was certainly critical to Watson and Crick’s discovery, and a case might be made for awarding her colaureateship. Structure which Franklin herself hinted at. Franklin may have been awarded the Nobel Prize if she had not died so soon after publication but Watson & Crick sythesized the data others had collected more than doing any original work themselves and then understated the work others (especially Franklin) had done to make themselves more impressive. From [here](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53dn.html): > [@](#): > > In 1951, Watson attended a lecture by Franklin on her work to date. She had found that DNA can exist in two forms, depending on the relative humidity in the surrounding air. This had helped her deduce that the phosphate part of the molecule was on the outside. Watson returned to Cambridge with a rather muddy recollection of the facts Franklin had presented, though clearly critical of her lecture style and personal appearance. Based on this information, Watson and Crick made a failed model. It caused the head of their unit to tell them to stop DNA research. But the subject just kept coming up. > > Franklin, working mostly alone, found that her x-ray diffractions showed that the “wet” form of DNA (in the higher humidity) had all the characteristics of a helix. She suspected that all DNA was helical but did not want to announce this finding until she had sufficient evidence on the other form as well. Wilkins was frustrated. In January, 1953, he showed Franklin’s results to Watson, apparently without her knowledge or consent. Crick later admitted, “I’m afraid we always used to adopt – let’s say, a patronizing attitude towards her.” And do we even discuss Chargaff’s work? ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/11 "2013-04-12T17:37:15Z")
Maybe more to the OP’s idea of a dud: Gabriel Lippmann (1908 Physics) Just a horrible process of photography with a lot of limitations. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/12 "2013-04-12T17:44:17Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Structure which Franklin herself hinted at. Franklin may have been awarded the Nobel Prize if she had not died so soon after publication but Watson & Crick sythesized the data others had collected more than doing any original work themselves and then understated the work others (especially Franklin) had done to make themselves more impressive. > > From [here](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53dn.html): > > And do we even discuss Chargaff’s work? A quick perusal of your cite reveals no grounds for suggesting Watson and Crick did not deserve their prize. On the contrary, it states: they “_took a crucial conceptual step_.” Also, a “hint” is not good enough, even if heliacal. Linus Pauling had gone astray with a _triple_ helix model. He rightly got secondary credit and no prize for his work. Chagas and many others are described at length which I do not recall well in Watson’s great account _The Double Helix._ I think many, although not Franklin, were motivated by professional jealously, and by feelings of slight at not having been described in sufficiently bland but glowing terms by Watson. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/13 "2013-04-12T17:56:06Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > A quick perusal of your cite reveals no grounds for suggesting Watson and Crick did not deserve their prize. On the contrary, it states: they “_took a crucial conceptual step_.” You mean this? > [@](#): > > Watson and Crick took a crucial conceptual step, suggesting the molecule was made of two chains of nucleotides, each in a helix as Franklin had found, but one going up and the other going down. Crick had just learned of Chargaff’s findings about base pairs in the summer of 1952. He added that to the model, so that matching base pairs interlocked in the middle of the double helix to keep the distance between the chains constant. I think the issue is that they did not actually produce any new data but rather said “What if we had 2 helices instead of one? It works.” and if that contribution really deserves a Nobel Prize. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/14 "2013-04-12T18:17:34Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was a joke. **Moderator Warning** **Clothahump** , I’m sure you are aware that political jabs are not allowed in GQ, since you’ve recently been warned for it. (In any case, the Peace Prize was explicitly excluded in the title.) This is an official warning. Don’t do this again or you may find your posting privileges under discussion. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/15 "2013-04-12T18:35:31Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > You mean this? > I think the issue is that they did not actually produce any new data but rather said “What if we had 2 helices instead of one? It works.” and if that contribution really deserves a Nobel Prize. There was much more to it than merely guessing the that the helix was double: [Nobel Website: The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix](http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/dna_double_helix/readmore.html) (from link): > [@](#): > > The base-pairing mystery had been partly solved by the biochemist Erwin Chargoff some years earlier. In 1949 he showed that even though different organisms have different amounts of DNA, the amount of adenine always equals the amount of thymine. The same goes for the pair guanine and cytosine. For example, human DNA contains about 30 percent each of adenine and thymine, and 20 percent each of guanine and cytosine. > > With this information at hand Watson was able to **figure out the pairing rules**. On the 21st of February 1953 he had the key insight, when he saw that **the adenine-thymine bond was exactly as long as the cytosine-guanine bond. If the bases were paired in this way, each rung of the twisted ladder in the helix would be of equal length, and the sugar-phosphate backbone would be smooth.** > > “It has not escaped our notice that **the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic materia** l” wrote Watson and Crick in the scientific paper that was published in Nature, April 25, 1953. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/16 "2013-04-12T23:26:25Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > **Moderator Warning** > > **Clothahump** , I’m sure you are aware that political jabs are not allowed in GQ, since you’ve recently been warned for it. (In any case, the Peace Prize was explicitly excluded in the title.) This is an official warning. Don’t do this again or you may find your posting privileges under discussion. > > Colibri > General Questions Moderator In his defense, I think you can make a good argument that the Nobel committee got caught up in the moment in 2009 and their decision was unwarranted enough to be open to a legitimate amount of ridicule. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/17 "2013-04-12T23:30:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > In his defense, I think you can make a good argument that the Nobel committee got caught up in the moment in 2009 and their decision was unwarranted enough to be open to a legitimate amount of ridicule. Sure, and I wouldn’t argue against that. But it’s in the _first four words_ of the OP subject title as being excluded, as well as in the OP, with the Peace Prize being characterized as “absurd.” I mean, come on. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/18 "2013-04-13T00:25:35Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > James Watson & Francis Crick: What did they do that was original? DNA had long been know to be the factor of inheritence (Avery in 1944 based on Griffith’s work in 1928. THAT deserved a Nobel Prize) and they stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and theories that unlocked the whole “double-helix”. That is absolute bullshit. Franklin probably deserved to share the prize with Watson and Crick, and very likely would have done so if she had not been dead, but it was they who recognized both the double helical structure (which she was still explicitly denying until she learned of their work) and, much more importantly, the base pairing, something of which she had no inkling. It is base pairing that enables DNA to be the genetic material, not the fact that it is helical. Franklin made nice X-ray diffraction images of DNA. She did not understand their significance (until Watson and Crick pointed the way). The crucial evidence that led Watson and Crick to the idea of base pairing came from Erwin Chargaff, but he did not recognize what his results meant, just as Franklin did not recognize the meaning of hers. Very arguably, he deserved a share of the prize as much as Franklin did, and indeed, he seems to have been very bitter that he did not get it. On the other hand, I think one could make a good case that Maurice Wilkins, who _did_ share the prize, did not really deserve it, and got it largely because he was given credit for what Franklin had achieved largely despite him. ¬¬¬¬¬¬ Much the same goes for Hewitt and Bell. She may have been the one who noticed the anomaly in the data, but it was him who recognized what it meant, and that is the hard part in science, not making a lucky (or even a laborious) observation. And of course, that is just what you are saying about Penzias and Wilson, and I think you may well be right about them (but I do not know the details of that story). ETA: I see I have been partly ninjaed by **colonial** , but I also think his quote considerably overstates how much Chargaff understood about teh significance of his results. As I recall, he did not present them in a form that made it obvious that A=T and G=C. It was Watson and Crick who realized that as well as the actual mechanism of the pairing. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/19 "2013-04-13T00:52:55Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Watson and Crick’s work was pedestrian compared to Franklin’s groundbreaking observational data. Any competent scientists could have filled in the blanks. The ones that did just happened to be Watson and Crick. She was too busy photographing Bigfoot to engage in gross anatomy of the photos. Ludicrous. Franklin’s work was skillful but in no way groundbreaking. She was just competently applying well established techniques of X-ray crystallography. Watson and Crick, by contrast, synthesized information and ideas from a number of sources, of which Franklin’s work was only one, arguably not even the most important (they were, after all, fairly convinced DNA must be helical well before they knew anything about her data) and had a remarkable and fresh insight. It was very far from a matter of just filling in blanks. Very few others, at the time (apart from Watson and Crick), even thought it plausible that DNA was the genetic material, or thought it a very important molecule to understand. Indeed, Franklin herself was only working on it because because Wilkins hired her to do so, and Wilkins was only working on it because someone had given him a nice sample, and because it no-one else with the mathematical chops to do X-ray diffraction analysis was already working on the stuff. Watson, by contrast, was among the very few who had understood the significance of Avery’s 1944 experiment, and truly believed DNA was important. (Watson did not have the mathematical chops though, which was why he recruited Crick.) Of course it turned out that Wilkins did not have the experimental chops (at first, anyway) to do X-ray decent diffraction studies of DNA, which is why he hired Franklin. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502/20 "2013-04-13T01:48:56Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I think I have a different definition of dud based on who got awards but didn’t really do Nobel worthy research… Yes, this is what I was thinking about. All the way to “Hey, remember that guy from 1903? Well, almost everything he said was wrong. Shit happens.” Has there ever been anything remotely like that? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excluding-lit-or-peace-have-there-ever-been-any-of-the-nobel-prizes-that-were-duds/655502.md?page=2)