I 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

I 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.