Ig Nobel Prices awarded this week

[Thesauron]

Almost as famous as the Nobel Price, but every bit as real, is the Ig Nobel Price handed out at Harvard this week. On the surface, all the celebrated research sounds a bit daft, but a lot of it - when examined closely - is actually intended to tackle real-world problems.

And nearly all of the science gets published in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

Reproduction Prize - The late Ahmed Shafik, for testing the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats.

Economics Prize - Mark Avis and colleagues, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.

Physics Prize - Gabor Horvath and colleagues, for discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones.

Chemistry Prize - Volkswagen, for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested.

Medicine Prize - Christoph Helmchen and colleagues, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).

Psychology Prize - Evelyne Debey and colleagues, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.

Peace Prize - Gordon Pennycook and colleagues, for their scholarly study called "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit".

Biology Prize - Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats.

Literature Prize - Fredrik Sjoberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.

Perception Prize - Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.

Source

[hatcheckgirl]

2 hours ago, Thesauron said:

Medicine Prize - Christoph Helmchen and colleagues, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).

Or, you can just relieve the itch by just scratching it.....

 

Funny, almost hysterically so. Yet so so sad.

[Thesauron]

Or, you can just relieve the itch by just scratching it.....
 
Funny, almost hysterically so. Yet so so sad.

This is something you could actually try at home.

[Tortuga]

Amazing...

 

While regular award ceremonies are serious affairs, the Ig Nobels go out of their way to be wacky.

Audience members typically throw paper planes towards the main stage, while some Ig Nobel winners either come dressed as their research or perform a colorful rendition of it.