Are science Nobel prizes scraping the barrel of first rate achievers?

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No - because they have already scraped the barrel, and are now scratching stained sawdust off the wood at the bottom.

How do I know?

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1. The prizewinners are getting older - some are very old indeed.

For a while the prize committee have been sifting the second-raters who missed-out on prizes a few decades ago. Now they are sifting the third-raters - it seems than the younger generation are only fourth-rate, and the scraping hasn't got down that far - yet...

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2. The actual prizewinners are now almost impossible to predict, because there are so many third rate scientists who are all more-or-less at the same level, that it has become a near-lottery which of such a vast pool will get the Nobel.

In the past the first rank scientists were real geniuses, and pretty much selected themselves. There were quite a lot of them - but sooner of later they got a Nobel unless they died young.

Nowadays there are very few real scientists alive, and vanishingly few at the upper echelons (the leading, ruling, most-powerful scientists are the most corrupt, the most dishonest, the worst motivated of all) - so the Nobel committees are no longer able to evaluate science.

A modern 'elite' 'scientist', of the type that gets himself onto major committees, could not recognize real science even if it jumped up and bit him on the nose.

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3. Even with all the hype and spin that modern media can provide - the reported achievements of winners are distinctly underwhelming.

This is not for lack of important unsolved problems in science, but because modern scientists (or to be more accurate modern 'professional researchers and project managers', who refer to themselves scientists) can't solve the difficult problems.

Why not? - many, many reasons. The modern scientific career sieves out creativity and intelligence in favour of obedient, industrious mediocrity - but there aren't so many bright and creative scientists anyway; so-called science is a fake - it is not even trying to do science but is instead trying to get funding, publish papers, and for the big names to become powerful, rich and famous; research is now done by bureaucracies - science is not just bureaucrat-ic, but is now nothing-but-bureaucracy: truth is defined by peer review, not by what works.

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Nobel prizes began as awards for scientific genius, then became prizes for being excellent at science, but are now prizes for - well, some-things altogether different than science,

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