4 ms·
This would be a valid analogy if there was a secret group at your school only handing out tickets to kids from the same extended families and no one else. How
by light_hue_1 2y ago
This would be a valid analogy if there was a secret group at your school only handing out tickets to kids from the same extended families and no one else.
How you don't see that as an abuse of power is beyond me. Sometimes HN feels eerily like talking to Trump supporters that rationalize any abuse.
- gwerbret 2y agoI think your concern might apply when there's a question about whether the discovery actually has significant merit. Context is important. In this case, the discovery of microRNAs ushered in a whole new area of biology and medicine, and led to techniques (easy methods to selectively target and suppress gene expression) that facilitated discoveries in many other areas.
- light_hue_1 2y agoNo. It has nothing to do with the discovery being of significant merit. There are countless discoveries of significant merit that aren't rewarded by the Committee. They have many choices at their disposal. And they intentionally choose from only a small narrow pool of potential winners to keep it in the family. That's corruption.
- gwerbret 2y agoI think you may have missed the point. By "significant merit" I meant "significant enough merit to be very deserving of a Nobel prize". The Karolinksa crew can award and have awarded the prize for nonsense in the past, but this wasn't one of those instances. Of course, if your point was "it doesn't matter how deserving the winners are, they're all corrupt" then that's the sort of argument that facts can't counter.