another high-profile author retracts articles

But at first glance this one doesn’t look like an especially big deal (I would assume that the investigation is routine). Still, it would be very embarrassing to be of that stature and have to go through a process of RETRACTING RESEARCH FINDINGS. Especially after you already have a Nobel in the bag and probably don’t expect to be under intense scrutiny in your remaining career.

Incidentally, how many people actually did better work after a Nobel Prize than before it?

No, I’m not inclined to agree with the theory that receiving the Prize deaden’s peoples ambitions. I tend more to think that no one, of no matter what level of brilliance, has an especially long window of creative innovation (it’s hard to escape your first maturity, as Clement Greenberg puts it), and that by the time the Prizes catch up to you it’s likely that the window is already closed.

Yeats is often held up as the best example of a Nobel Literature winner who did his best writing afterwards. I’d have to think a minute about whether there are any obvious cases in the sciences, though since Marie Curie won twice she’d be an obvious example to look into.