Press releases, event posters, news stories & speakers’ bureaus have all falsely described economist Mark Jaccard as a Nobel winner. He says it isn’t his fault.

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Mark Jaccard is an economics professor at Simon Fraser University. A few days ago he told readers of his blog that an “anonymous person” has falsely accused him of claiming to be a Nobel laureate.

There’s nothing anonymous about my own accusations in this regard. I recently called him a counterfeit Nobel, and my concerns extend back a full year.

Jaccard insists: “I have never spoken or written of myself as a Nobel laureate.” According to him, he’s being subjected to “misinformation” and “misrepresentation” because he vigorously expresses his views.

When Jaccard deliberately got himself arrested last May by illegally interfering with coal trains, multiple media sources highlighted his fake Nobel status (see here, here, here, and here).

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Could that have had anything to do with the fact that he issued a statement beforehand, on the StopCoal.ca website, which includes a biographical paragraph that says he has “won the Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”?

Could it have had anything to do with the fact that this same statement was printed out and distributed to people such as journalists? (Readers new to this controversy may wish to consult this post.)

Jaccard says the source of all the confusion is really a two-month-old magazine article. He says the editors referred to him as a Nobel laureate

in connection to an article I wrote and this reference was apparently also in newspaper articles and in a press release that was not issued by me. I will work hard to prevent future occurrences, but cannot guarantee that people will not make this mistake in future. [bold added; link in original]

In other words, it’s someone else’s fault. Third parties, totally of their own accord, have been going around mistakenly describing him as a Nobel laureate. What’s a fella to do?

Colour me unconvinced. Jaccard’s bio at the National Speakers Bureau continues, to this day, to bear the following headline:

Nobel Peace-Prize Winner, Professor & Former CEO, British Columbia Utilities Commission [bold added, backed up here]

Notice that the Nobel claim comes first – before mention of the fact that he’s a professor, and before we learn that he once led a provincial regulatory agency. (If you look closely, you’ll find the word “Nobel” used twice more on that page.)

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The WayBack Machine over at Archive.org, tells us that this headline has been in place since at least November 2010.

Are we supposed to believe that Jaccard didn’t write – or sign off – on this description of himself when that webpage went live? Are we supposed to believe he’s never looked at it in more than two three years?

Is Jaccard not mortified that organizations seeking speakers (and willing to pay handsomely) continue to be falsely advised that he’s a Nobel winner? A listing over at MarketPlaceESpeakers.com bears the identical headline, by the way.

It’s great news that Jaccard says he’s now prepared to work hard to prevent future misunderstanding. After he arranges for the speakers bureau listings to be fixed, here are some other places in which the record needs to be corrected:

• a 2008 media release concerning a report authored by Jaccard – describing him as “a winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize”
• an official-looking website promoting an October 2009 speech that continues to tell the world he’s a “Nobel Peace Prize laureate.”
• a May 2012 CBC news story that describes him as “a Nobel Peace Prize winner” in its second paragraph
• a Sept. 2012 Vancouver Observor article that describes him a “Nobel Prize Laureate”
• an online listing that says “Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mark Jaccard” will speak in October 2012 following a screening of the documentary film Chasing Ice
• a news item posted last month by Simon Fraser’s public affairs office that describes him as a “Nobel laureate” (backed up here)

And then there’s that trifling matter of the poster for a 2009 speech Jaccard gave at a public library. The one in which, totally against his will, he was falsely described as a “Nobel Laureate” in large letters.

It appears, in all its glory, at the top of this blog post – and is backed up here.

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see also:

Mark Jaccard, Counterfeit Nobel Laureate
The Activist Economist & the IPCC (Part 1)
The Activist Economist & the IPCC (Part 2)
A Few Crumbs of Pastry: More Nobel Nonsense
Slivers of the Nobel Pie
All for a Nobel Cause
The Uses and Abuses of a Nobel Prize

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