Not everyone will get to win a Nobel Prize. However, there’s the next best thing: the Ig Nobel Prize, which highlights unusual scientific research that provides both laughter and insight. Here are this year’s winners.
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Do you stay up at night wondering what would happen if bats got drunk and decided to carry on with their flight path?
Ever lost sleep over whether cows could be shielded from fly bites if they were painted with zebra-like stripes?
Are you constantly rattled by the physics of pasta sauce – specifically that annoying phase transition which can lead to clumping in your favourite Italian dish?
Well, amid all the bad news right now, at least this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes have provided a soothing balm. We know we’ll be sleeping soundly tonight – especially when it comes to the pesky pasta dilemma which frequently ruins our attempts at the ideal cacio e pepe.
Every year, the slyly irreverent but always fascinating Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think” - with prizes presented by genuine Nobel laureates. And this year’s 35th edition delivered the goods.
Scroll down for the full winners.
Organized by the digital magazine Annals of Improbable Research, there was the traditional paper plane pelting to honour the winners; a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year’s theme which is digestion; and a section called the 24-second lecture, where top researchers explain their work in 24 seconds. That last one included Trisha Pasricha, who explained her work studying smartphone use on the toilet and the potential risk for hemorrhoids.
“Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable,” said Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine. “The same is true of every worthless discovery. The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate ALL these discoveries, because at the very first glance, who really knows?”
So, without further ado, here’s the lowdown on this year’s winners:
LITERATURE (USA)
The late physician William Bean, for persistently recording and analysing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years.
PSYCHOLOGY (POLAND, AUSTRALIA, CANADA)
Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac, for investigating what happens when you tell a narcissist — or anyone else — that they are intelligent.
NUTRITION (NIGERIA, TOGO, ITALY, FRANCE)
Daniele Dendi, Gabriel Segniagbeto, Roger Meek and Luca Luiselli for studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.
PEDIATRICS (USA)
Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp for studying what a nursing baby experiences when their mother eats garlic.
BIOLOGY (JAPAN)
Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima, Naoto Aoki, Say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Ueda, Hiroyuki Hirooka and Katsutoshi Kino, for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like stripes can avoid fly bites.
CHEMISTRY (USA, ISRAEL)
Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich and Frank Greenway, for experiments to test whether eating Teflon (a form of plastic more formally called ’polytetrafluoroethylene’) is a good way to increase food volume, and hence satiety, without increasing calorie content.
PEACE (THE NETHERLANDS, UK, GERMANY)
Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.
ENGINEERING DESIGN (INDIA)
Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal, for analysing, from an engineering design perspective, “how foul-smelling shoes affects the good experience of using a shoe-rack".
AVIATION (COLOMBIA, ISRAEL ARGENTINA, GERMANY, UK, ITALY, USA, PORTUGAL, SPAIN)
Francisco Sánchez, Mariana Melcón, Carmi Korine and Berry Pinshow, for studying whether ingesting alcohol can impair bats’ ability to fly and echolocate.
PHYSICS (ITALY, SPAIN, GERMANY, AUSTRIA)
Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti, for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can yield an unappetizing dish.
In case you were wondering, bats aren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol, and when forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered; cows that were painted with zebra-like stripes were nearly 50 per cent less likely to endure horsefly bites; and if the water is too hot or you don’t have the right ratio of cheese-to-starch, making cacio e pepe will become a congealed clump of a nightmare. The trick is to use corn starch in the cheese and pepper sauce instead of solely relying on how much starch gets into the boiling water while the pasta cooks.
Now you know and you have these intrepid scientists to thank.
Check out the Ig Nobel website here, and remember: just because not everyone will join the pantheon of greatness alongside Marie Curie, Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, doesn’t mean recognition for your contribution to science (and humour) should be overlooked.
