[9][7] Nobel disease also serves to demonstrate that, for some prize winners, being universally hailed as correct appears to bolster the individual laureate's confirmation bias more than it does their skepticism.
[9] Alexis Carrel, winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the invention of the perfusion pump, became an advocate of eugenic policies in Vichy France.
[4][9] James Watson was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
[9][12][13] Nikolaas Tinbergen won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals.
Josephson has promoted a number of scientifically unsupported or discredited beliefs, including the homeopathic notion that water can somehow "remember" the chemical properties of substances diluted within it (cf.
§ Luc Montagnier); the view that transcendental meditation is helpful for bringing unconscious traumatic memories into conscious awareness; and the possibility that humans can communicate with each other by telepathy.
[4][9] Louis J. Ignarro, winner of the 1998 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for his research on nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, became a consultant of Herbalife, and helped to promote dietary supplements.
In 2009, in a non-peer-reviewed paper in a journal that he had founded, Montagnier claimed that solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses could emit low frequency radio waves that induce surrounding water molecules to become arranged into "nanostructures".
[9] Scott O. Lilienfeld et al. list more examples of "Nobel laureates who held/hold weird ideas": Pierre Curie, who participated in spiritual seances; John William Strutt, who "was fond of parapsychology"; J. J. Thomson, who was interested in psychic phenomena; Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who wrote a book "on hypnosis, spiritualism, and metaphysics"; Wolfgang Pauli, who, together with Carl Jung, "developed the concept of synchronicity"; Egas Moniz, for his belief that lobotomy can treat mental illnesses; Julian Schwinger, for his work on cold fusion; Ivar Giaever, for global warming skepticism; Arthur Schawlow, for his support of a debunked "technique of facilitated communication for autism"; and Richard Smalley, for promotion of anti-evolutionary ideas.