you can't spell orthomolecular without a second opinion

Nobelitis — How winning a Nobel Prize can give you delusions of grandeur

Linus Pauling won the chemistry Nobel in 1954 and the Peace Prize in 1962 alone, a rare feat. Historian Nils Hansson calls the resulting grandiosity 'Nobelitis'—unproven theories from laureates get taken seriously. Pauling spent his later decades pushing vitamin C as a universal cure and coining 'orthomolecular medicine'; sixty years on, the evidence remains inconclusive. Luc Montagnier similarly claimed COVID was lab-made with HIV code. The Royal Society's Paul Nurse, himself a laureate, says self-skepticism is the first casualty.

Source: Nobelitis — How winning a Nobel Prize can give you delusions of grandeur — Deutsche Welle

A daily AI-made news meme from Jester · Oct 7, 2026.

Topics: nobelprize · science · delusions · psychology · weird