Welcome to today’s heaping dose of cynicism, to start off the weekend right: Scandal has hit none other than the Nobel Prize, after it was revealed that a member of the Nobel selection committee also sat on the board of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceuticals juggernaut that will benefit from this year’s award for medicine.

The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine went to three people this year, Luc Montagnier and his (ahem, female) partner Françoise Barre-Sinoussi for discovering HIV, and Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer.

Wouldn’t you know it, AstraZeneca just happens to have a big fat stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines.

To make matters worse:

Two senior figures in the process that chose Mr. zur Hausen have strong links with the pharmaceutical company, which has also recently begun sponsoring the Nobel website and promotional subsidiary. The company strongly denies any wrongdoing.

Ah yes, well as long as they deny any wrongdoing! No matter that these sponsorships are estimated to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next three years. Also mildly fishy is the fact that the chairman of the five-person committee that assesses Nobel candidates served as a paid consultant for AstraZeneca in 2006.

And as if improper drug company ties weren’t enough, there’s also the little matter of expenses-paid trips to China for Nobel committee members, made with the intention of “tell[ing Chinese] officials how candidates are selected for prizes.”

The anti-corruption unit of the Swedish police is reportedly starting a preliminary investigation—though Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, has dismissed the whole hubbub as a media ploy. Meanwhile, the rest of us can cry into our smörgåsar and wait for Santa to announce his sponsorship deal with Pfizer.

Related:
RB: Note to Media: They Give Nobel Prizes to Women These Days
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter

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This morning, the three winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine were announced. One of the honored three is French scientist Françoise Barre-Sinoussi, a member of the team who first discovered HIV and its role in causing AIDS. Her co-discoverer, and fellow Nobel winner, is Luc Montagnier. Besides the fact that they were the first researchers to isolate the virus, the biggest thing there is to know about them is that one is a man, and the other is a woman.

Unfortunately for Françoise—and for the reputation of the science-covering media—the Nobel committee apparently failed to include a picture of her in the press release, spelling out her female-ness for all to see. What happened next, in a display of basic fact-checking—or even just minor Googling—that would make Jayson Blair proud, was the following CNN report:

Two Frenchmen and a German won the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of viruses that cause HIV and cervical cancer, the organization’s Web site said Monday.

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France were honored “for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus.” The pair are recognized as the discoverers in 1983 of the virus that can expose people to AIDS.

And to pour a little sodium chloride in the wound, Scientific American’s Steve Mirsky described the duo as “the two Frenchmen” in a podcast that’s now posted on their Web site. The transcript of the podcast has since been changed—without any note of the correction—to “the two French scientists.” Apparently Françoise was deemed female enough to be identified as such—Nobel Prize and all.