It’s the time of year again, and who, in these days of impeachment inquiries and presidential gas lighting , couldn’t use a diversion? (And it relieves me from having to find another topic requiring actual writing.) The 29th annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony took place, as it always does, in the Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. An abridged video of the ceremony can be viewed here:
The summary of the awards is below the fold, along with tonight’s comments. First, here’s a word from our sponsor:
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The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes
The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded to published scientific work that, according to Annals of Improbable Research, which awards the prizes, “first makes you laugh, and then makes you think.” The list of awards and the literature references can be found here. Now to the the awards:
MEDICINE [Italy, The netherlands]:
Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.
Medical Education [USA]:
Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique— called “clicker training” —to train surgeons to perform orthopedic surgery.
BIOLOGY [SINGAPORE, CHINA, GERMANY, AUSTRALIA, POLAND, USA, BULGARIA]:
Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, and Tomasz Paterek, for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches.
Anatomy [FRANCE]:
Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.
CHEMISTRY [JAPAN]:
Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child.
Engineering [Iran]:
Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.
ECONOMICS [TURKEY, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY]:
Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria.
PEACE [UK, SAUDI ARABIA, SINGAPORE, USA]:
Ghada A. bin Saif, Alexandru Papoiu, Liliana Banari, Francis McGlone, Shawn G. Kwatra, Yiong-Huak Chan, and Gil Yosipovitch, for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch.
PSYCHOLOGY [Germany]:
Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.
PHYSICS [USA, TAIWAN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SWEDEN, UK]
Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.
And that concludes your cube-shaped summary of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes. We’ll do it all again next year, assuming we’re all still here.
And now, to the comments!
Top Comments (October 3, 2019):
From elenacarlena:
I'd like to nominate this comment by Bernindownthehouse, in Vetwife's recommended tribute rant to OPOL. I agree that OPOL and Shaun King were two of the strongest voices here, and two of the most interesting because of their strength. And he quotes a long and cherished OPOL rant. We will miss OPOL a lot!
From twingrace:
From ArcticStones, the jaw dropping explication of McGovern78's expression of shock at the news Mark Sumner shares in his front page post The "propaganda" provided by the State Department IG isn't a distraction. It's the key.
Top Mojo (October 2, 2019):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
Top Photos (October 2, 2019):
Thanks to jotter!