[grey_whiskers]

One more interesting point to me is that by emphasizing his Nobel Prize, he seems to be implicitly relying upon argument-by-authority; I thought that science was supposed to have replaced scholasticism long ago...

It brings to mind the famous perversion of Newton's quote posted upon some graduate student's door:

The reason I cannot see as far as others is that giants are standing on my shoulders.

[Dimensio]

The reason I cannot see as far as others is that giants are standing on my shoulders.

I'm not sure that's the actual quote. From what I've read, he was making a snide comment about someone else, claiming that the person in question could only see far because they stood on the shoulders of giants.

But I'm no historian. I'll try to dig up the real quote.