Science in Review

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Everyone has heard of the prestigious Nobel Prizes, presented annually to outstanding people for their work in different fields.

What some may not have heard (if you are into science you have for sure) is that since 1991 a different kind of prize is awarded: the Ig Nobel Prizes.

The ceremony is organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research and are supposed to reward achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. Or that are just outstandingly ridiculous, I might add.

Anyway, this year’s list:

• Aviation - Discovery that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag;
• Medicine - Work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword;
• Linguistics - Showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.;
• Peace - Research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behavior among enemy troops;
• Literature - Study of the word “the”, and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order;
• Physics - Study on how sheets become wrinkled;
• Nutrition - Limits of the human appetite researched by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, “bottomless” bowl of soup;
• Biology - Census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds;
• Economy - Device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them;
• Chemistry - Method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavoring from cow dung;

And that is all for this year’s edition of the Ignoble Prizes.

Keep doing fantastic research and we’ll see you all next year. 

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