Nobel Prizes in the sciences do seem to withstand the test of time better than economics, literature, and (laughs) peace.
Awards don't just exist to award the individual.
In polarizing times, where the instinct is to create more conflict as a path to resolving conflict, what many of the Peace Prize winners have done, is to remind everyone that alternate non-obvious paths exist.
For the former, Henry Kissinger.
There are examples of the latter, as well.
With 2 members of the committee resigning in protest, it seems not everyone with power to award it was so morally corrupt.
Also there was a 1,200+ page Senate investigation into the use of torture by the previous administration.
Neither method really provides any useful intelligence. The difference is victims of torture can go on ‘60 Minutes’, victims of targeted drone strikes can’t.
It may not be fair, but the people who don't die because of that effect won't complain.
Whether the prize played a role in their decision is something only they can say (and then you might not believe them).
So I find this question useless, because it cannot be answered. The mechanism I sketched is generally plausible, though.
Do you actually propose that they did violent things because they got the prize?
Possible, but not terribly plausible, IMO. And the examples proffered so far (Obama or Kissinger) certainly don't fit that pattern.
I find that not impossible to argue, but incredible, and would want to see supporting evidence.
> The five real Nobel Prizes—physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and medicine/physiology—were set up in the will left by the dynamite magnate when he died in 1895. The economics prize is a bit different. It was created by Sweden’s Central Bank in 1969, nearly 75 years later. The award’s real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” It was not established by Nobel, but supposedly in memory of Nobel. It’s a ruse and a PR trick, and I mean that literally. And it was done completely against the wishes of the Nobel family.
> “The Economics Prize has nestled itself in and is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize. But it’s a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation,” Nobel’s great great nephew Peter Nobel told AFP in 2005, adding that “It’s most often awarded to stock market speculators …. There is nothing to indicate that [Alfred Nobel] would have wanted such a prize.”
https://www.alternet.org/2012/10/there-no-nobel-prize-econom...
Well that will probably rule out any economist opposed to central banking systems.
The Nobel Foundation [1] disagrees. That bank donated the money to establish the prize, but it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same organization that awards the physics and chemistry prizes, using the the same procedures.