According to the BBC Science & Environment site, the 20012 Ig®Nobel Prizes were recently awarded (IgNobel site here). As you may know, these are satirical prizes that honor the most bizarre-sounding research of the year:
Thursday’s Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre was the 22nd since the American science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, started the event.
The gala is always attended by real Nobel Laureates, who are tasked with handing out the prizes. Recipients get 60 seconds to make an acceptance speech. If they run over, a young girl will start to shout “boring”. Another tradition is for everyone in the theatre to throw paper planes.
Here’s the list of winners. I must say that I’m distressed to see Frans de Waal (whose work I like a lot) on the list for Anatomy; although the nature of his work sounds funny, it may be valuable to see the way chimps recognize each other in groups. Ditto for the Medicine prize, as people’s colons have been blown out by a combination of a spark in the apparatus and intestinal gas (methane).
But the Literature prize is right on.
Psychology Prize: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan (Netherlands) and Tulio Guadalupe (Peru/Russia/Netherlands) for their study Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller.
Peace Prize: The SKN Company (Russia) for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.
Acoustics Prize: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada (Japan) for creating the SpeechJammer – a machine that disrupts a person’s speech by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.
Neuroscience Prize: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford (US) for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere – even in a dead salmon.
Chemistry Prize: Johan Pettersson (Sweden/Rwanada [sic]) for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people’s hair turned green.
Literature Prize: The US Government General Accountability Office for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
Physics Prize: Joseph Keller (US), Raymond Goldstein (US/UK), Patrick Warren and Robin Ball (UK) for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail. Prof Keller was additionally given an Ig for work he contributed to on non-drip teapots in 1999 but for which he had been wrongly overlooked at the time.
Fluid Dynamics Prize: Rouslan Krechetnikov (US/Russia/Canada) and Hans Mayer (US) for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.
Anatomy Prize: Frans de Waal (Netherlands/US) and Jennifer Pokorny (US) for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.
Medicine Prize: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti (France) for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimise the chance that their patients will explode.
The prizes were awarded yesterday at Sanders Theater of Harvard University in this long (>2 hr) ceremony
Shockingly bad reportage from the beeb. I believe the girl’s name is Cutie Pie, and she says, not shouts, “Please stop. I’m bored.”
“Sweetie Poo,” actually. There were two of them this year. I think she’s always about the same age as this year’s Sweetie Poo (I do believe the two girls were a singular entity for the purpose of the ceremony).
b&
“I must say that I’m distressed to see Frans de Waal (whose work I like a lot) on the list for Anatomy; although the nature of his work sounds funny, it may be valuable to see the way chimps recognize each other in groups.”
Every time I see the IgNobel prize list, I remind myself that the Dunning-Kruger effect – a valuable part of sceptical thought – was awarded the prize.
This was apparently on Thursday. Mfor those who saw it or will watch it I should add that Prof. Szostak never actually got an invite or information on the event. He found out about it when a friend in attendance messages his wife during the event. If anyone does watch and catches the arsenic life skit, you’d make his day if you emailed him the time it starts on the video.
It just isn’t the same without Crandall and Stahl.
Interestingly, a recent edition of QI</i), Series J, featured both the SpeechJammer and the “meaningful brain activity anywhere” (in jelly, ostensibly), but without specific mention of the IgNobel Prizes.
I think the SpeechJammer prize is undeserved: I remember a demonstration of that effect in a science museum in Toronto when I visited in 1978. (Also, incidentally, a screening of one of the first 3D films to use polarised lenses.)
The “dead salmon” has certainly been used as ammunition by anti-science folks in arguments online (here?) as evidence for… God? Mind-brain duality, at least.
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* Eeep. HTML fail. Sorry.
I agree about the SpeechJammer. Bell Telephone work on echo cancelers in the 1950s was in response to this problem. It would have been observed as voice circuits were set up over longer distances. I don’t know when the effect was first observed. Maybe during WWII?
While delaying a speaker’s voice and returning it to his ear at a certain level will indeed render him nearly speechless with stuttering, it will actually allow stutterers to gain control of their speech.
There are several devices on the market intended to help stutterers by using this technique. They are essentially the same thing as a SpeechJammer and can achieve the same effect on a non stutterer.
Devices date back to the early reel tape recorders, but the “mercury delay line” used in the earliest computers could certainly do the trick too. You could easily rig the machine to record and play back a short time later. Later devices included the “spring reverberator” which was a popular kit for car radios in the 1960s. The old spring gizmo was later replaced by electronic circuitry but the spring remains popular with some people because you can get some distortion effects by simply kicking the box.
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I don’t think there is any cause for distress: some research can be both funny and good. A case in point was the magnetic levitation of a frog (the IgNobel winner later went on to win the Nobel prize for other stuff).
Indeed, the Igs are as much of a celebrity roast as anything else. It’s a celebration of the funny — the intentionally funny as well as the unintentionally funny.
The dead salmon MRI team won it, for example, and they set out to make a humorous point about certain bad methods that were in widespread use but aren’t any more.
For the most part, the research that wins the award is legitimate and actually interesting. It’s just that it’s hilarious as well.
If it were just about humiliation, then the Discovery Institute would sweep the awards every year.
Cheers,
b&
Wouldn’t they actually have to do some research before they were allowed as a contender?
Not only would they have to do research, but their study would have to make you think after making you laugh.
The Disco ‘Tute’s “research” actively inhibits thinking….
b&
You make it sound as if the prizes are meant to mock. They aren’t. The stated criteria for the Ig Nobel is for, “Research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think.”
Many awardees of the Igs say they are as happy or happier to get an Ig Nobel as a Nobel.
The second part has always been important. The Ig Nobels celebrate curiosity. They are not kin to Proxmire’s old Golden Fleece awards.
Chemistry Prize: Johan Pettersson (Sweden/Rwanada) for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people’s hair turned green.
For a documented case of this, see My Life as a Dog.
Seems that it’s only blondes living mostly in new houses in Anderslöv, and then only if you shower with water that’s been standing in the copper pipes for some time (like overnight).
And (I got curious about this) the winner has been with the local environmental service, but is now on a sabbatical of sorts with the UN in Rwanda. (Had to double-post since WP doesn’t seem to like two links in the same post.)
“Prof Keller was additionally given an Ig for work he contributed to on non-drip teapots in 1999 but for which he had been wrongly overlooked at the time.”
Do these fools not know that the non-dribbly teapot is like the holy grail for tea drinkers?
Actually, I prefer to pour the tea into a thermos as soon as it’s done steeping. That way, it stays hot and doesn’t get bitter or otherwise over-brewed.
That’s especially the case for green teas, but even applies to chamomile.
It also means that I can use a small (Japanese-style) teacup so the whole cup isn’t cold by the time I’m done drinking it.
Starbucks, of all companies, has a nice double-walled steel thermos with a sippy-cup-style lid that works great. The tea doesn’t drip as you pour it out of the thermos, and the thermos holds a single (small) pot’s worth — just as much as I want to drink.
The alternative is to devote your whole attention to the tea, such as in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, and to brew and drink it according to a rigid schedule. That’s fine and dandy as an ends unto itself, but that’s not what I’m looking for when I make a pot of tea in the morning.
Cheers,
b&
“chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends”
Great. Now Homeland Security will want a second photo added to the driver’s license.
They don’t really need a photograph – they get all the information they need by groping your butt.
Curious minds wants to know if in those two hours there was implied criticism of Templeton?
I heard that IgNobel was featuring a show against an ‘Intelligent Designer’ billionaire ordering an invisible dress for the universe.
I wouldn’t have voted for the “speech jammer” at all – many decades ago the “spring delay” line was used in speech studies and even in therapy. Almost 20 years ago I built a few delay circuits using a chip manufactured for the karaoke industry; the gizmos were used in hands-on science exhibits to show people how they react to delayed sound. Kids in particular can adapt very quickly while adults who are not already accustomed to it generally struggle to speak normally. If you really want to thwart speech, you need to make the delay variable or else much longer than ~0.25s.
What is the value of knowing chimps can recognize each other by seeing pictures of butts. Let’s extend the principal a little. Would it be worthwhile if we found out chimps could recognize pictures of faces, or sounds of voices, or recognize and remember behaviors? Much of basic research is ridiculed, until at a later date other researchers use bit and pieces of what we thought was useless research to formulate a medical, evolutionary, chemical, or biological, breakthrough. None of the fantastic, essential breakthroughs we applaud would be possible if basic foundational research did not make it possible. Laugh now but applaud later.
Patrick Warren, of the Physics prize, is a member of my caving club, the Craven Pothole Club. Though I wouldn’t have guessed for a second that his work involves hair, or hair care in any way shape or form. It’s the way that he routinely comes out of the ground clarted towards sphericity with mud.
I suppose there is one indication of head-adornment thought in his mind. He is, in the best traditions of caving worldwide, as mad as a hatter. (At weekends.)
As someone who is forced to have regular colonoscopies, may I say how grateful I am that hard working scientists have figured out a way to make sure my colon doesn’t explode. Sooooo very grateful!
As other posters have pointed out, I think Jerry unfortunately misunderstands the IgNobels.
They are most certainly not given out for merely stupid or useless research.
I’m not sure about the levitating frog, but look up Andre Geim, the first winner of both the IgNobel and the Nobel prizes. His method for obtaining thin sheets of graphene is well deserving of both prizes :).
(He also co-authered his favourite hamster on one of his papers as H.A.M.S Ter Tisha).
The world needs more scientists like Prof Geim, and more acknowledgement of them!
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