September is here, and with it the听year鈥檚 new crop of 10 Ig Nobel prizes, each for a piece of research chosen with the same simple criterion听鈥� that it makes people laugh, then think. As per tradition, Feedback presents them to you.
A question of taste
Jan Zalasiewicz at the University of听Leicester, UK, won the chemistry and geology Ig for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. His听essay 鈥淓ating fossils鈥�, in The Palaeontological Association鈥檚 newsletter, emphasises the simple practical gain: During the ceremony, he acknowledged that, yes, sometimes it is also a matter of taste.
Advertisement
A team based in France, the UK,听Malaysia and Finland won the literature prize 鈥渇or studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times鈥�. Their paper, called , was published in the journal Memory.
During the ceremony, Nobel laureates present Ig Nobel prizes to听the winners. Nobellian Al听Roth told the team: 鈥淚 have to say, I had never seen a paper like this before, and I say congratulations and congratulations and congratulations and congratulations.鈥�
Spidery grip
Te Faye Yap, Daniel Preston and听their colleagues at Rice University in Texas won the mechanical engineering prize for , thus pioneering a field for which they invented the name: 鈥渘ecrobotics鈥�.
In presenting them the prize, Barry Sharpless, who has two Nobel prizes in chemistry, confessed he himself is terrified of听spiders because of a childhood encounter with tarantulas. He expressed admiration for the necroboticists鈥� courage.
Seung-min Park won the public听health prize for , a device that uses a variety of technologies听鈥� including a computer-vision system for defecation analysis and听an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera听鈥� to听monitor and quickly analyse the听substances that humans excrete. During the ceremony, Park spoke of his mixed hope and dread in trying to simultaneously diagnose individual people鈥檚 health problems and protect their听privacy (and privates).
Going backwards
Mar铆a Jos茅 Torres-Prioris, Adolfo Garc铆a and their team won the communication prize for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backwards. Their study focused on a community in La听Laguna, Spain, where some people听grow up learning to speak backwards as well as forwards.
The medicine prize went to Natasha Mesinkovska and her team听at the University of California, Irvine, for using cadavers as a means to explore whether there is听an equal number of听hairs in each of a person鈥檚 two nostrils. Their surprisingly charming 颈苍听迟丑别 International Journal of Dermatology says that the average nose hair count per nostril is around 120 in the cadavers they examined.
This started out as an attempt to听learn the medical significance, if听any, of听there being hairs in one nostril but not the other in a living individual with alopecia.
It鈥檚 electrifying
Experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food won the nutrition prize for Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura at Meiji University in Japan. They have found ways, , to听make food taste saltier than it really is. This is a potential health boon for people who like to dine on food that gains its tastiness from being ultra-salty.
Katy Tam, Christian Chan and听their colleagues won the education prize for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. Anyone with sufficient interest can read details of that research in a pair of studies: and .
In 1969, Stanley Milgram听鈥� famous for his series of experiments about 鈥渙bedience to听authority鈥�, in which people seemed to obey instructions to听give electric shocks to strangers听鈥� performed a more听gentle experiment.
Milgram (who died in 1984) and听two of his students听鈥� at least one of whom, Leonard Bickman, is听still alive听鈥� were awarded the psychology prize for on a New York City street to see how many passers-by stopped to听look upward when they saw strangers looking upward. Bickman accepted the prize on听behalf of the entire trio.
Bieito Fern谩ndez Castro and his team won the physics prize for the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.
The entire Ig Nobel ceremony was again, as in the first three pandemic years, held .
听
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and听co-founded听the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is听.
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.
听
