Fred Reines won the Nobel Prize in Physics (and the associated million dollars) in 1995 for detecting neutrinos, but he made a mistake in 1956 which long delayed his award.
My father worked with Reines, and told me this story yesterday at dinner. Reines published a paper in 1956 about his neutrino experiments, but failed to make any mention of possible error in his calculations. As it turned out, his calculations were off by a factor of two – which lead to mistrust in the physics community. Eventually Reines overcame the mistrust and did win the Nobel Prize, but by 1995 he was already suffering dementia and wasn’t able to fully enjoy it.
Michael Mann believes he already won the Nobel Prize, despite an error in his hockey stick of ~?. Mann could gain a little respect by admitting that his hockey stick is complete garbage.
Perhaps dementia has already set in? Maybe we should give Mann a million dollar bill, to make him feel better.
