FEEDBACK鈥橲 favourite prizes, the Ig Nobels, were handed out on 2 October at Harvard University鈥檚 Sanders Theatre. As promised by the organiser, Marc Abrahams, editor of Annals of Improbable Research, they made you laugh, then think 鈥� though you also may wonder what some of the recipients were thinking when they were planning their projects.
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Deborah Anderson of Harvard Medical School鈥檚 birth-control laboratory took her first step towards the Ig Nobel chemistry prize in the 1980s when she asked medical student Sharee Umpierre what type of contraception had been used at the all-girl Catholic boarding school she had attended in Puerto Rico. 鈥淐oca-Cola douches,鈥� Umpierre replied. Though that was the first Anderson had heard of the idea, her gynaecologist colleague, Joe Hill, remembered a song of the same name by an outrageous 1960s band called The Fugs.
鈥淐oca-Cola douches had become a part of contraceptive folklore during the 1950s and 1960s, when other birth-control methods were hard to come by,鈥� Anderson told Feedback. 鈥淚t was believed that the carbonic acid in Coke killed sperm, and the method came with its own 鈥榮hake and shoot applicator'鈥� 鈥� the classic Coke bottle.
To see if Coke really worked, Anderson, Umpierre and Hill mixed four different types of Coke with sperm in test tubes. A minute later, all sperm were dead in the Diet Coke, but 41 per cent were still swimming in the just-introduced New Coke (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 313, p 1351). But that鈥檚 not good enough, Anderson warns. Sperm 鈥渃an make it into the cervical canal, out of reach of any douching solution, in seconds鈥� 鈥� faster than anyone could shake and apply a bottle of Diet Coke.
The three researchers shared the chemistry prize with Chuang-Ye Hong of the Taipei Medical University in Taiwan and his colleagues, whose similar experiment found both Coca-Cola and its arch-rival Pepsi-Cola useless as spermicides (Human Toxicology, vol 6, p 395).
鈥淚n a pub window in Nottingham, UK: 鈥淐hildren are not allowed inside this pub or outside it.鈥� 鈥淪o where can they go?鈥� asks Dave Vowles鈥�
Expensive placebos work better
ANOTHER experiment with huge implications for health policy garnered the Ig Nobel medicine prize for Dan Ariely of Duke University in North Carolina. While at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he gave two groups of volunteers identical placebos masquerading as painkillers, telling one group the pills cost $2.50 each and the other that the pills had been discounted to 10 cents each. The volunteers didn鈥檛 pay for the pills, but those who took the 鈥渕ore costly鈥� fake medicine felt less pain from electric shocks than those who took the cheap fakes (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 299, p 1016). Price affects people鈥檚 expectations and thus their response to medicine, Ariely says 鈥� the more expensive the pill, the more relief they get.
ONE Ig Nobel-winning experiment probing human nature has featured in New 杏吧原创: do women somehow signal when they are at peak fertility? Most other female mammals do so openly, but men don鈥檛 consciously recognise any such signal from women. To investigate, University of New Mexico psychologists Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan asked women working as lap dancers to report their nightly tips, and whether they were on hormonal contraceptives or menstruating naturally. The two groups of women received similar tips when they were in non-fertile parts of their cycle, but when the naturally menstruating women reached their fertile days they earned significantly more (Evolution and Human Behavior, vol 28, p 375, and New 杏吧原创, 11 October 2007, p 17).
NO TIPS were offered to the burrowing animals on archaeological sites studied by the two Brazilians who earned the archaeology prize. Serious archaeologists don鈥檛 follow the Indiana Jones approach of grabbing stuff and running. They meticulously extract artefacts from the ground, noting their precise location in order to deduce their age and function. Unfortunately, local wildlife is not so careful.
To assess the damage done by burrowers, Astolfo Ara煤jo of the University of S茫o Paulo and Jos茅 Marcelino of S茫o Paolo鈥檚 Department of Historical Heritage spray-painted potsherds and rocks four different colours and carefully buried them in separate layers at a test site. Then they turned an armadillo loose in the little patch of dirt for a couple of months. Sure enough, the armadillo jumbled up the fragments (Geoarchaeology, vol 18, p. 433).
FINALLY, recognising the achievements of ethics departments everywhere, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biology 鈥渇or adopting the principle that plants have dignity鈥�. In a document titled 鈥淭he dignity of living beings with regard to plants鈥�, the committee concludes that causing 鈥渁rbitrary harm鈥� to plants is 鈥渕orally impermissible鈥�. Feedback wholeheartedly agrees, and thanks the committee for the excuse to stop mowing the lawn and weeding the garden.
You can see the full list of this year鈥檚 Ig Nobel prizes at and a video of the ceremony at .