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He was awarded the prize for his academic work, not his shilling for the Democratic Party.

• DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  It's a prize. A prize in the field of economics, which is hardly physics. Unless there is some empirical process for selection and award, it's just the result of a committee's opinions. If we can agree on that, certainly you can see that the door is open for the members of the committee to be swayed by lots of things, including his political work/views. To act otherwise is to try to turn respected scientists into some sort of mechanistic non-humans. People are influenced by all sorts of things, at the conscious and unconscious levels. I have no idea what part of my statement is controversial. Yet it seems to just drive some people nuts.
  • deleted 18y ago
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  • jcl 18y ago
    As far as I can tell from the Wikipedia page, there is no difference in the selection processes for the physics and economics prizes... All prizes are just the result of a committee's (and nominators', and screeners') opinions. In this respect, they are all equally valid. For what it's worth, though, the committee members are selected by Norwegian/Swedish institutions, which are perhaps less likely to be swayed by political actions in the U.S.