The Ig Nobel awards are with us again.
Here are some titles of research papers that have won Ig Nobel awards
over the years.
Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs
The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition
The Effect of Country Music on Suicide
An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces.
All were genuine research papers published in academic journals.
Perhaps Lambchop had something to do with that last one.
We all knew that they can be disgusting, disease-ridden creatures, but I think they should leave the poor policemen alone to go poo in their own space.
Do you think the doughnuts have anything to do with the salmonella?
“The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition” sounds like a ridiculous topic to the casual reader. Yet unilateral forced nostril breathing is an ancient practice. Yoga practicioners had been doing this for over a thousand years. Far from being a topic of ridicule, I think that it makes very good sense to study the effects of this practice more fully.
Some of the Igs are for truly ridiculous stuff. There was that French guy into homoepathy who got one for showing that you could email homeopathic remedies. I think he held a transducer in front of a jar of stuff and recorded the signal on a CD. Then he transferred that to a computer and emailed it from Paris to Chicago, then they did the reverse. The water into which the signal was transferred worked just as well as the original water.
Some, though, as Doug pointed out, just sound funny. I remember one a couple of years ago that was awarded to the guys who calculated the bellowing inward of the shower curtain. That actually appeared in Physical Review Letters, which is one of the most prestigious physics journals. The interesting thing about that was that it was due to vortices, which are ubiquitous; they appear in everything from superconductivity to weather. So, while the shower-curtain problem isn’t important and sounds just plaini silly, the techniques they used were innovative and actually may have an impact on weather forecasting.
Far from being offended at winning an Ig Nobel, the authors of that paper attended the festivities and recognized it for what it is – all in good fun, and a way to bring science into the news in a manner that’s more likely to get people to pay attention.
Quite right. The people who award these things are having a laugh. Sometimes it’s at the expense of the idiots who do absurd research. Sometimes it’s at the expense of laypeople who don’t appreciate that something that sounds funny might be genuine research.
If I ever got awarded one I’d go along with the laugh. My doctorate was on vagueness and I had to endure several years of bad jokes about that. But the mechanics of boundary drawing and maintenance is of crucial social as well as academic importance. I know that but the man in the street doesn’t have to. I’m not sure my university would be pleased though. Bean counters aren’t noted for their sense of humour.
I’m actually trying for the No Bell Prize. Failing that, I’ll happily settle for the Pullet Surprise.
My grandfather, who was raised on a farm, was fond of playing a joke on his grandchildren. He would ask, “What kind of chicken is this?” He would point to my forehead and say, “rooster”, he would point to my chin and say, “hen”, and he would point to my nose and say, “pullet”. Then, he would point back to my nose and say, “What did I say this was?”. In my ignorance of the joke, I would say, “pullet”. That is when my nose got gently pulled. For those of you not raised on a farm, a pullet is a young hen, less than a year old. I think that you could call my grandfather’s joke the “pullet surprise”.
None of the researchers at the Waldco Institute have ever even been nominated, yet their ignobility is beyond reproach.
An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces.
I think this would be well-received in South Dakota.