Tag: nobel prize

Epstein Ties Befoul a Nobel Laureate

A Nobel-winning scientist is stepping away from a top post at Columbia University—and cited Jeffrey Epstein in connection with his exit. Richard Axel, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for landmark work on how humans perceive odors, said in a statement Tuesday he will resign as co-director of Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to focus on research and teaching. Columbia said there is no evidence the 79-year-old violated university policy or criminal law, but that it agreed with his decision to relinquish the leadership role.

NBC News reports Axel appears in or is referenced in more than 900 Justice Department documents tied to Epstein; the New York Times reports they indicate he frequently visited Epstein’s Manhattan home and helped connect Epstein with Columbia officials tied to admissions and philanthropy. “My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret,” Axel said, calling Epstein’s conduct “appalling” and his own “association with him … inexcusable.” Axel, a Columbia professor for more than five decades, is also giving up his position as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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The fake Nobel economics prize was part of a ploy to de-democratize control over economic decisions. And it worked!

Another year, another round of Nobel Prizes, and yet another opportunity to remind people that — unlike the other Nobel Prizes — there is no actual Nobel Prize in Economics. There never has been. 

The fake Nobel prize in economics was part of a propaganda ploy hatched in the 1960s by Sweden’s activist central bank to imbue neoclassical (aka neoliberal) economic theories with mainstream credibility and respect. The plan was to give what was in essence a radical political ideology the sheen of a real, hard science — in line with the Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics and biology.

That history is reflected in this year’s winners — two obscure economists working in a very narrow field: a subset of game theory that deals with optimizing auctions. Wow! Wait, auctions? Huh? 

We’re surrounded by oligarchy, austerity, corporate power over every aspect of our lives, environmental destruction on a global scale. And we’re talking designing slightly more efficient auctions? I don’t know about you, but it seems like some seriously narrow-minded accountant-type work given our dire apocalyptic times.

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