aquitaine said:
So basically an indian engineer is nominated for a nobel prize, and doesn't get it. He http://news.indiainfo.com/2003/07/07/07nri.html claiming the process is flawed. Any merit to this, or is he just being a sore loser? Thoughts?
Well first: He
doesn't know whether he was nominated. At most, somebody qualified to nominate may have told him they nominated him (breaching confidentiality), but there's few ways he can actually know that. The records are sealed for 50 years and the confidentiality rules are quite clearly specified on a paper accompanying the nomination forms sent out every year.
(I'll just mention that unnecessary detail to show that I might have a bit of insight here..)
In any case, the proof is in the pudding: If the Nobel committees got it wrong a lot, the Nobel prizes simply wouldn't have the status they do. It isn't
that big a cash prize (and during some periods, it was a quite meager sum). But with that status, it's inevitable you'll have a bunch of sore losers, as well as people trying to influence the process (which has kept its integrity quite well if you ask me).
Finally, even if you do consider the process to be flawed, there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Nobel's will was quite specific in its instructions, and as executors of it, they're legally bound to follow it to the letter.