The Nobel Prize system – whatever else it is – is an elitist enterprise: a network, a self-referential club that favors those with particular socio-economic advantages. It parallels in structure the incestuous traditional self-promotive Jewish model. In a 1977 study of American Nobel Prize winners (laureates) in science, Harriet Zuckerman determined that:
* 82% of Nobel winners had fathers who were professionals, managers,
or proprietors. [p. 65]
* Nobel winners were twice as likely as losers to have come from a
"professional" families, and a bit more likely than others to "have
fathers in business." [p. 65]
* Only 15% of the winners came from "blue-collar or white collar"
families. [p. 65]
* More than half of the 92 Nobel laureates surveyed "had worked as
students, post doctorates, or junior collaborators under older laureates.
[p. 116]
* There was a "fair amount of intermarriage between laureates and the kin
of laureates." [p. 97]
* Six laureates shared the prize with their mentors. [p. 116]
* Laureates tend to come from elite universities. [p. 116]
* "Elite masters [Nobel laureates] can mobilize resources for their
apprentices [future laureates]," including fellowships, grants, jobs,
and publication possibilities in influential journals. [p. 132]
* The prestige of the Nobel Prize has been used to "confer legitimacy"
upon "ideological, political, commercial, and military" ventures. [p. 23]
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