Nobel Chemist With More Integrity Than Obama And Gore Just Retracted Her Prize-Winning Paper
A commitment to integrity caused an award-winning Chemist to retract the paper that landed her Chemistry’s most prestigious prize.
At a time where scientific reliability is falling into disrepute because ‘peer-reviewed’ experiments are proclaiming results that cannot be reproduced, one woman of integrity showed the world how it’s SUPPOSED to be done.
She had won one-half of the 2018 Nobel prize in Chemistry.
This year’s Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have been inspired by the power of evolution and used the same principles – genetic change and selection – to develop proteins that solve mankind’s chemical problems.
One half of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Frances H. Arnold. In 1993, she conducted the first directed evolution of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyse chemical reactions. Since then, she has refined the methods that are now routinely used to develop new catalysts. The uses of Frances Arnold’s enzymes include more environmentally friendly manufacturing of chemical substances, such as pharmaceuticals, and the production of renewable fuels for a greener transport sector.
The paper that gave her a place in history, (not to mention about a half-million dollars in prize money) on the ‘directed evolution of enzymes’ turned out to be non-repeatable. Those words are the death-knell of any new scientific claim. If it can’t be repeated, it is falsified.
And, Frances took the news like a champ, admitting her error.
No fingers pointed. No whining. Just a straight-up admission that she had gotten it wrong.
For my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams. The work has not been reproducible. https://t.co/Dk1TFw0FY9
— Frances Arnold (@francesarnold) January 2, 2020
If pulling her paper means she forfeits the BENEFITS of that award, it could cost her quite a lot. But her professional integrity was worth more to her than the prestige.
This writer can think of at least two American politicians who have won Nobel Prizes, on far flimsier pretexts than just an unreproducible chemical result.
Barack Obama — about five seconds into his Presidency — was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He then proceeded to be the first President EVER to be at war for the ENTIRETY of an 8-year term. ISIS grew in strength under his watch. Libya collapsed. Syria became a failed state, sparking a massive refugee crisis. And he droned a LOT of people — ten times as many as Bush did.
…The strike was the last under Obama (that we know of). The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” — Council On Foreign Relations
And for all of Pelosi’s handwringing about Trump taking out Suleimani, where was she during the Obama administration?
U.S. forces have now surpassed 2,800 strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria under President Obama’s war against the Islamic State, all as part of a conflict Congress has yet to specifically authorize — and amid worries lawmakers won’t ever act.
Under intense pressure from Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama finally submitted a draft authorization for the use of military force against the Islamic State in February, but it’s since languished, caught in the stalemate between those who want tighter restrictions and those who want the president to have as free a hand as possible.
Now analysts worry that inaction will set a dangerous precedent and leave Congress shorn of its warmaking powers. —WashingtonTimes, 2015
Will Barack “I’m really good at killing people” Obama be returning that Peace Prize of his — and the Million or so bucks he was awarded?
What about Al Gore? He won himself a Peace Prize, too.
An Inconvenient Truth
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice President Al Gore for their efforts to obtain and disseminate information about the climate challenge. In Gore’s case, certainly, the award was grounded in his tireless campaign to put the climate crisis on the political agenda.– Source: NobelPrize
Al Gore wrote a propaganda film about the environment that lost a court ruling.
Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth contains nine key scientific errors, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.
The judge declined to ban the Academy Award-winning film from British schools, but ruled that it can only be shown with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.
In the documentary, directed by Davis Guggenheim, the former US vice president and environmental activist calls on people to fight global warming because “humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb”.
But Judge Michael Burton ruled yesterday that errors had arisen “in the context of alarmism and exaggeration” in order to support Mr Gore’s thesis on global warming.
Source: Telegraph 2007
Wouldn’t you just LOVE to hear Obama and Gore explain why their records deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as winners devoted to eliminating the use of chemical weapons or attempting to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict, or struggling to have human rights recognized in China?