It's Ig Nobel time again!

The annual Ig Nobel awards were presented last week, to the delight of tongue-in-cheek scientific geeks and research nerds all over the world. The awards are described as follows:

The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year ... for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

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The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.

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The awards are sometimes veiled criticism (or gentle satire) ... Most often, however, they draw attention to scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule", a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor will not become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.

There's more at the link.

This year's winners included many outstanding entrants. ABC News reports that they included:

Medicine: To two teams from the Netherlands and the United States who studied how having the urge to pee can affect one’s decision-making. The first team found that when people have to pee a little, they make quicker, better decisions. The second group found that when they really have to pee, they become basket cases, more dangerous on the road than drunk drivers (“Hey! There’s a gas station! I’ll pull over!”). To quote from their paper in Neurourology and Urodynamics: “The magnitude of decline in cognitive function associated with an extreme urge to void was as large and equivalent or greater than the cognitive deterioration observed for conditions known to be associated with increased accident risk.”

Psychology: To Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo “for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.” (No, we don’t do it when we’re sad, or breathe sighs of relief. Teigen’s survey showed we do it when we’re ready to throw in the towel.)

Physics: To four French physicists and one Dutch colleague, “for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.”

Chemistry: Ever had too much wasabi, the bright green stuff at a Japanese restaurant? Makes your mouth feel like it’s on fire, right? Seven Japanese researchers applied this observation in order to make perhaps the world’s most original alarm for real fires. They calculated “the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish)” to spray on sleeping people in case of emergency.

Again, more at the link. The full list of winners may be found here.



Peter