Ig Nobel Prizes awarded

December 1, 2014 • 11:41 am

I’m in the home stretch for The Albatross, finishing the text in the galley proofs today. What that means for you is that I have no time for anything substantive, and you must be satisfied with persiflage. The good news is that we have some good persiflage.

The 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on September 18 at Harvard, and there’s a good list of them at Improbable Research. The awards have been going since 1991, and, as Wikipedia notes:

The prizes are presented by genuine Nobel laureates, originally at a ceremony in a lecture hall at MIT but now in Sanders Theater at Harvard University. It contains a number of running jokes, including Miss Sweetie Poo, a little girl who repeatedly cries out, “Please stop: I’m bored,” in a high-pitched voice if speakers go on too long. The awards ceremony is traditionally closed with the words: “If you didn’t win a prize — and especially if you did — better luck next year!”

Sadly, I left Harvard before the awards began, but I have watched them on the Internet.

I’ll just put up a few of the science ones, which have useful links to the original papers. Note especially the Public Health Prize and the Neuroscience Prize.  The Nutrition Prize is outrageous.

PHYSICS PRIZE [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that’s on the floor.

REFERENCE: “Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin,” Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, Tribology Online 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Kiyoshi Mabuchi

 

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

REFERENCE: “Seeing Jesus in Toast: Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Face Pareidolia,” Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, Kang Lee, Cortex, vol. 53, April 2014, Pages 60–77. The authors are at School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Xidian University, the Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and the University of Toronto, Canada.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Kang Lee

 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

REFERENCE: “Creatures of the Night: Chronotypes and the Dark Triad Traits,” Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 55, no. 5, 2013, pp. 538-541.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Peter Jonason

 

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.

REFERENCE: “Changes in personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasmosis,” Jaroslav Flegr and Jan Havlicek, Folia Parasitologica, vol. 46, 1999, pp. 22-28.

REFERENCE: “Decreased level of psychobiological factor novelty seeking and lower intelligence in men latently infected with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii Dopamine, a missing link between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis?” Jaroslav Flegr, Marek Preiss, Jiřı́ Klose, Jan Havlı́ček, Martina Vitáková, and Petr Kodym, Biological Psychology, vol. 63, 2003, pp. 253–268.

REFERENCE: “Describing the Relationship between Cat Bites and Human Depression Using Data from an Electronic Health Record,” David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013, e70585.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Jaroslav Flegr, David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan

 

BIOLOGY PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY, ZAMBIA]: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth’s north-south geomagnetic field lines.

REFERENCE: “Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field,” Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, Frontiers in Zoology, 10:80, 27 December 27, 2013.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Veronika Němcová, Hynek Burda

 

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, INDIA]: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, for treating “uncontrollable” nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.

REFERENCE: “Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient with Glanzmann Thrombasthenia,” Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, vol. 120, no. 11, November 2011, pp. 732-36.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Sonal Saraiya

 

ARCTIC SCIENCE PRIZE [NORWAY, GERMANY, USA, CANADA]: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.

REFERENCE: “Response Behaviors of Svalbard Reindeer towards Humans and Humans Disguised as Polar Bears on Edgeøya,” Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, vol. 44, no. 4, 2012, pp. 483-9.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Eigil Reimers, Sindre Eftestøl

 

NUTRITION PRIZE [SPAIN]: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga, for their study titled “Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages.”

REFERENCE: “Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages,” Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, Margarita Garriga, Food Microbiology, vol. 38, 2014, pp. 303-311.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: The winners were unable to attend the ceremony; they delivered their acceptance speech via video.

55 thoughts on “Ig Nobel Prizes awarded”

  2. I have to admit that, after I’d read about the research on dogs aligning themselves with the earth’s magnetic field, I DID check my 2 poodles to see if they did this. It looks like they do so about 75% of the time.

    Perhaps I should joint publish. Either that or take up a hobby….

  3. The Public Health prize seems a bit of a stretch. A parasite that infects 10% of the US population and as much as 33% worldwide seems worthy of serious study.

    2. The IG nobel prize is awarded to studies that “first make us laugh, then make us think”.

      I think all the studies shown above qualify!

      1. Fair enough. I’m just saying that for me, cat bites and depression aren’t in the same chuckle-inducing category as Jesus on toast, banana-peel friction, or making sausage out of baby poop. From a comedy perspective, it’s the weakest entry in the lineup.

      2. Those titles to me don’t seem very chuckle-inducing. And as I recall, the notion that toxoplasmosis may be responsible for significant public health impacts via personality change is a seriously investigated hypothesis.

        Studying banana skin slips and baby-poop sausages is inherently silly, but these papers seem pretty serious to me.

  4. I can actually imagine the utility of some of these studies, but find them funny nonetheless.

    And I think it’s quite cool that the winners (should that be in quotes?) actually attend to claim their prize (should that be in quotes too?).

  5. I liked the economics prize:

    Economics: ISTAT — the Italian government’s National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

  6. I don’t know, they might be onto something with the baby-poo sausage. I mean if some really hungry Greek person didn’t eat a bunch of spoiled dairy products one day, we’d have no yogurt.
    I’m just sayin’ . . .

    2. I’m also often wondering how olives came about. You can’t really eat them untill you put them in salt brine, but you wouldn’t put them in salt brine unless you want to conserve them – a not quite edible fruit. You could just go ahead and press oil from them, which also stores good. My guess is someone was hungry enough for wanting to store them whole, not wasting a scrap.

  7. PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

    Early mornings are for birds and farmers.

      1. I tend toward night owl behaviour but medication and life seems to make me tired enough that I keep almost normal person hours.

        If those who tend toward psychopathy work at night, I’ll stick with the day timers. I’ve met enough low empathy folks in my corporate life and they exhaust me.

        1. Oh dear, I’m a very late night person. And I thought I’d built up some empathy with Diana over, ummm, toilet paper orientation even if we’re on opposing sides of the argument. Ah well, can’t win ’em all. I’ll just have to be a lonely psychopath (sob)

          1. Ha ha! Well, you could be a regular empathic person surrounded by psychopaths. I wonder if the study mistakenly used vampires in their sample size & that skewed the data.

    2. Yes, that’s the first thing I thought too. I’m going to guess that very few people who are self-admiring, manipulative, and psychopathic think to themselves “hey, I know — I think I’ll be a farmer!”

      In fact, almost every job I can think of which requires rising very early in the morning (thus creating a habit of doing so even when not working) seems pretty down-to-earth to me, from street cleaners to bakers to health care professionals. So if this wasn’t controlled for it may not say anything about the effect of being a ‘night owl’ vs. ‘lark,’ and may just be looking at personality distinctions between career choices.

      1. “I’m going to manipulate the hell out of those carrots!” said no farmer ever. 🙂

        3. Then again, if nobody manipulated carrots, this site would likely not exist.

          I’ll bet you didn’t know there was a carrot museum on the Internet.

          1. Who would think there would be so many carrots that you could put them in a museum on the internet?

            Also, I suppose if we didn’t manipulate carrots, they’d taste boring & woody probably like Queen Anne’s Lace.

          2. It’s not something most people think about, but pretty much every crop comes in a similar variety. Wheat, for example, comes in all the colors of the rainbow. Growing up, we had a small patch of lavender-colored strawberries that my Mom had cultivated from a cutting from one of her UC Berkeley professors. And on the subject of Berkeley, there’s even tie-dye tomatoes.

            Alas, few such varieties ever even come within shouting distance of a supermarket….

            b&

      2. Statistically there are more psychopaths in C level corporate jobs. Those guys are typically early risers.

  8. I always thought that the slippery part of the banana was the inside of the peel, not the outside. They seemed to measure the frictional coefficient between the outside of the peel with the sole of a shoe and also of the floor.

    What about the frictional coefficient between the two inside surfaces of the peel?

    I’m pretty sure I don’t know what I’m talking about.

    1. I have found the slippery part is between the outside skin and the inside. So banana peel down, skin side up, then step and swoooosh! The slippage is in the middle layers.
      Not that I have ever done this…

    2. The sole of the shoe touches the outside of the banana peel, the underside of the peel touches the floor. They measured the frictional coefficient of the inside of the banana peel and a panel of linoleum. It all seems to make sense. I’m very surprised no one has done this before.

  9. Does the medicine prize mean every household should stock up on bacon? This seems like a much easier, cheaper and tastier solution than looking for a medical centre at 11 pm as was my experience earlier this year.

  10. So who of you is going to take their polar bear costume on, and stalk a herd of reindeer? Want to see if you get overrun and trampled to smithereens by a daft bull. Please carry GoPro.

    2. It might also be less than fun if a real polar bear hoves into view. Whether its intent towards the fake bear was territorial or nuptial its not a situation I’d want to be in!

  11. As a night owl, I’m rather interested in that paper for the psychology prize. My wife is a morning person. Huh.

    1. Well, that Psychology paper’s nonsense.
      “more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic”
      That’s an outrageous slur. I stay up very late at night, and yet I’m extremely modest about my many fine achievements, as my many friends have readily attested on many occasions. I would like to meet those researchers in a dark alley some night, that would teach ’em to make wild unfounded generalisations.

      ‘Creatures of the Night’. Hmmm, maybe it has a certain ring to it.

  12. “Response Behaviors of Svalbard Reindeer towards Humans and Humans Disguised as Polar Bears on Edgeøya,

    It’s not much of a study unless they have a control arm with actual polar bears.

    1. Edgeøya’s in Svalbard. Actual polar bears probably go without saying.
      Possibly armoured ones.

  13. I would like to know what is “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers.” (2005). Does anyone know?

  16. These seem relatively calm as far as improbable research goes. (My favourite historical one was when people tried to find a metric equivalent of the milestone.)

    But still funny: I think it is important to tell serious jokes, and these count!

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