Famed biologist Charles Darwin once said: “I love fools’ experiments; I am always making them.” And so to this year’s IgNobel Prizes, the humorous counterparts to the real Nobel Prizes awarded last week.
The IgNobels . a deprecating play on the word ‘ignoble’ – honor research that at first glance may appear to be such ‘fools’ experiments’. Yet, as Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which sponsors the awards, says: “The IgNobel prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.”
IgNobel prizes were awarded to research into stinky feet, woodpeckers and headaches, the sound fingernails make on blackboards, and the placing of a finger in the rectum to cure hiccups. All improbable sounding, all IgNobel research is real and has been published in prestigious scientific and medical journals. However, unlike the real Nobel Prizes, IgNobel Prize winners receive no money and little recognition beyond the IgNobel prizes themselves.
This year the IgNobel Prizes had a Dutch winner: Bart Knols of Wageningen Agricultural University was part of a research team that won the biology IgNobel for showing that the female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which carries malaria, is attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet, a study that was published in the Lancet medical journal.
Some of the other IgNobel Prize winners: in the field of ornithology, Ivan Schwab of the University of California-Davis, for explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches; in nutrition, Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University, for proving that dung beetles are finicky eaters; for peace, Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing a teenager repellent – a device that makes a high-pitched noise that annoys teenagers but is inaudible to most adults; for acoustics, D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand of Chicago’s Northwestern University for an experiment aimed at discovering why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is so irritating; in medicine, Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and the team of Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, for a study entitled ‘Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage’.
And finally, and of special interest to Delta’s staff photographers, the IgNobel for mathematics was awarded to Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photos a photographer must take to ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed. (DM)
Famed biologist Charles Darwin once said: “I love fools’ experiments; I am always making them.” And so to this year’s IgNobel Prizes, the humorous counterparts to the real Nobel Prizes awarded last week. The IgNobels . a deprecating play on the word ‘ignoble’ – honor research that at first glance may appear to be such ‘fools’ experiments’. Yet, as Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which sponsors the awards, says: “The IgNobel prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.”
IgNobel prizes were awarded to research into stinky feet, woodpeckers and headaches, the sound fingernails make on blackboards, and the placing of a finger in the rectum to cure hiccups. All improbable sounding, all IgNobel research is real and has been published in prestigious scientific and medical journals. However, unlike the real Nobel Prizes, IgNobel Prize winners receive no money and little recognition beyond the IgNobel prizes themselves.
This year the IgNobel Prizes had a Dutch winner: Bart Knols of Wageningen Agricultural University was part of a research team that won the biology IgNobel for showing that the female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which carries malaria, is attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet, a study that was published in the Lancet medical journal.
Some of the other IgNobel Prize winners: in the field of ornithology, Ivan Schwab of the University of California-Davis, for explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches; in nutrition, Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University, for proving that dung beetles are finicky eaters; for peace, Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing a teenager repellent – a device that makes a high-pitched noise that annoys teenagers but is inaudible to most adults; for acoustics, D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand of Chicago’s Northwestern University for an experiment aimed at discovering why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is so irritating; in medicine, Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and the team of Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, for a study entitled ‘Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage’.
And finally, and of special interest to Delta’s staff photographers, the IgNobel for mathematics was awarded to Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photos a photographer must take to ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed. (DM)
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