Guess the 2008 Nobel Prize awards
I’m amazed nobody has thought of this before, viz., making a guessing contest about who will be awarded the Nobel prizes. But apparently Medgadget is the first to do so.
The rules of their Guess-A-Nobel contest are easy: post your guess which scientist(s) or discovery(ies) will be awarded in their comment section here. You don’t need to motivate it further. You can take a guess at the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the prizes on Physics and Chemistry, respectively.
Unfortunately, Medgadget isn’t as well-endowed as the Nobel Foundation, so there are no large Swedish krona awards ín wait. The winner(s) each get an iPod nano, however, and the reputation for being good at Nobel divination, of course :-)
It’s a good idea — but has this really not been done before? Upplands-Bro county library (in Sweden) has a guess-a-literature-prize contest where the winner gets free entrance to the Nobel lecture. Any others?
Added 29 Sept 1:30pm: My good collegaue Svante Lindqvist at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm points out in a mail that the British betting and gambling company Ladbrokes have accepted bets for Nobel Prize winners for years (but that’s something different than a public contest, of course)
29 Sep 2008 Thomas
A Nobel Prize for the Nuclear REceptor field is overdue. One of the winners would include Dr. Elwood Jensen for his discovery of the first Nuclear Receptor, Estrogen Receptor. Ron Evans and Bert O’Malley could share the award.
It has been done before; in 2004, the Nobelpreisbörse was set up at the University of Frankfurt (but it seems to have gone defunct after the 2004 prizes). You were given an initial amount of (fictitious) cash and could buy shares in candidates.
What is the predictive quality of such a virtual stockmarket? On the one hand, the medicine laureates in 2004, Linda Buck and Richard Axel, weren’t picked by any trader; on the other, Luc Montagnier was the favourite on the Nobelpreisbörse in 2004 (with Robert Gallo as second …).
Interesting then to see that Gallo was excluded here in 2008 — se here: http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2008/10/06/why-didnt-the-nobel-committee-give-the-prize-to-gallo/