The 28th First Annual (2018) Ig Nobel prizes announced

[bnm73]

For those of you who don't know, the Ig Nobel prizes are sort of a spoof on the Nobel Prizes. Every year, the day before Nobel Prize winners start being announced, the Institute of Improbably Research awards prizes to scientists, etc., whose achievements are chuckle-worthy but still an achievement.

 

Previous prizes were awarded to the inventors of a smoke detector the releases the smell of wasabi to alert people, a study showing that cows with names give more milk than those who are nameless, and a study proving that listening to elevator Muzak can help prevent the common cold.

 

For those interested in actual scientific implications of this year's winners, interesting summaries can be found here:

 

Here are this year's winners: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/the-serious-science-of-the-ig-nobel-prizes-will-make-you-laugh-then-think/

 

Anthropology

Tomas Persson, Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, and Elaine Madsen, for collecting evidence, in a zoo, that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often, and about as well, as humans imitate chimpanzees.

 

Biology

Paul Becher, Sebastien Lebreton, Erika Wallin, Erik Hedenstrom, Felipe Borrero-Echeverry, Marie Bengtsson, Volker Jorger, and Peter Witzgall, for demonstrating that wine experts can reliably identify, by smell, the presence of a single fly in a glass of wine.

 

Chemistry

Paula Romao, Adilia Alarcao, and the late Cesar Viana, for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces.

 

Medical education

Akira Horiuchi, for the medical report, "Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned from Self-Colonoscopy."

 

Literature

Thea Blackler, Rafael Gomez, Vesna Popovic, and M. Helen Thompson, for documenting that most people who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual.

 

Nutrition

James Cole, for calculating that the caloric intake from a human-cannibalism diet is significantly lower than the caloric intake from most other traditional meat diets.

 

Peace

Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge, Maria-Luisa Ballestar, Jaime Sanmartin, Constanza Calatayud, and Beatriz Alamar, for measuring the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automobile.

 

Reproductive medicine

John Barry, Bruce Blank, and Michel Boileau, for using postage stamps to test whether the male sexual organ is functioning properly—as described in their study, "Nocturnal Penile Tumescence Monitoring with Stamps."

 

Economics

Lindie Hanyu Liang, Douglas Brown, Huiwen Lian, Samuel Hanig, D. Lance Ferris, and Lisa Keeping, for investigating whether it is effective for employees to use Voodoo dolls to retaliate against abusive bosses.

[+ honcho]

I'm wondering if the facebook style "reactions" are copyrighted or patented .. deserves a :D at least ... there doesn't seem to be one on the board conveying outright, audible guffaws and chuckles.

[bnm73]

I'm wondering if the facebook style "reactions" are copyrighted or patented .. deserves a :D at least ... there doesn't seem to be one on the board conveying outright, audible guffaws and chuckles.

 

I've looked forward to these every year for a long time. They are deliciously silly, but not entirely useless.

 

EDIT

 

For a list of current and previous winners, go to https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2018