Now for the news you all have been waiting for….drum roll….the winners of the 2007 Ig Nobel awards. The awards were established in 1991 to honor achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Harvard University sponsors the awards, which are handed out by real Nobel Laureates. Unlike the Nobel, however, no money prizes are given. Instead, you get a cool trophy like this one:
The criteria for the awards, sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), include requirements that studies represent real research that is actually published.
Here are the Winners!
Medicine: Brian Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.
Physics: A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.
Biology: Dr. Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.
Linguistics: A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.
Literature: Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word “the,” and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.
Peace: The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual beahvior among enemy troops.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink of Cornell Univesity for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, “bottomless” bowl of soup.
Economics: Cuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.
Aviation: A National University of Quilmes, Argentina team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.
My personal favorite? Has to be the jet-lagged hamsters! What do you think?
3 Comments
BBurt · October 14, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I love the idea of the Ig Nobels, I think they should get more publicity.
I was greatly amused at the idea that the US Air Force would look into a weapon that can provoke homosexual behavior among enemy troops, although I’m not too clear on how that would help our own troops. At first I just laughed, but then when you think about it, it is really quite offensive. Do they see homosexuality as a disease that can be spread? Is this something tax dollars have funded? It is certainly though provoking.
Laura Freberg · October 15, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I think the idea of the homosexual “bomb” was to make enemy troops so busy thinking about sex that they couldn’t fight. Apparently this idea was briefly put forward by the Air Force in 1994, and equally quickly rejected. Look here for more: http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html
Laura’s Psychology Blog » Two months of weight loss maintenance…. · October 10, 2007 at 8:20 pm
[…] While looking for weight control inspiration, I have enjoyed reading the work of one of our Ig Nobel laureates, Brian Wansink. Brian won, of course, for his research on the “bottomless soup bowl” [1]. If people eat tomato soup from a bowl that is constantly refilled through an unseen plastic tube, they consume 73% more soup than people eating from regular bowls. I can relate to this. As someone who was taught as a child to clean my plate, I dare not venture into buffets or salad bars. If it is there, it must be eaten. […]
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