In what can really only be described as a conference for people nobody likes, Sepp Blatter and Vladimir Putin hung out recently to discuss slave labor (probably), embezzlement (definitely) and the 2018 FIFA World Cup (unfortunately) which will be held in Russia.

Blatter and Putin presumably have a lot in common outside of the 2018 tournament; both excel at soliciting and paying bribes, both have a track record on human rights that would make Joseph Kony blush and both think the other is a swell guy.

In fact Putin went so far as to say that his buddy Sepp deserves a Nobel Prize, presumably for the grifting he recently did in Brazil and the millions he has reportedly laundered through small countries in the name of “youth soccer development”.

Putin either just told an amazing joke that none of us got or he sincerely thinks Blatter deserves to be mentioned along the likes of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and Malala Yousafzai.

Certainly, Blatter would rank among the worst Nobel Prize winners of all time, which got me thinking: who are the worst recipients for science Nobel Prizes of all time?


Antonio Egas Moniz won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for developing the lobotomy, a surgical procedure that involves removing significant portions of a person’s brain. A technique the Soviet Union would later go on to call "contrary to the principles of humanity."


Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for claiming that worms caused cancer. His experiment that led to discovery involved feeding worm infected cockroaches to rats. The rats subsequently developed “tumors” leading Fibiger to conclude the worms caused cancer. In the end they weren’t even tumors, but in the committees defense they had nominated him 16 times, so they had to give it to him just once.


Camilio Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal were awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for having entirely opposite views on how the nervous system worked. Golgi believe the nervous system was one continuous network, while Cajal believed the nervous system was made of connections between neurons. Just like the Highlander, there could only be one: Cajal was right. So Golgi won Nobel Prize for being wrong.


Unless Putin believes Sepp's misogyny deserves a Nobel Prize for Economics (which is entirely possible), Vlad probably meant old Sepp should win the Peace Prize. In this category Blatter may actually stand a chance, since the list of past recipients include Barack Obama and Yasser Arafat. And they were wise enough to exclude Gandhi, because what did that guy ever do for anyone else?