2008-10-05

Last night kicked the scientific award season into full swing; the 18th First Annual Ig Nobel Awards were handed out in Harvard's Sanders Theater. Not quite as well-known as their more prestigious namesake, the awards recognize "research that first makes people laugh and then think."

The ceremony saw the ever-popular 24/7 lecture series, where leading researchers from around the world discuss the technical details and ramifications of their work in 24 seconds, then explain it in layman's terms in 7 words. This year's 24/7 series included talks from Benoit Mandelbrot, Anna Lysyanskaya, Dany Adams, and the 1976 Nobel Laureate in chemistry, William Lipscomb. Other ongoing traditions include the Ig Nobels being handed out by Nobel laureates, and an eight-year-old girl being kept up past her bedtime whose role is to ensure that acceptance speeches are capped at 60 seconds.

In a ceremony with a main theme of redundancy, the ceremony honored the research that "makes people laugh and then think" in a redundantly-themed ceremony. This year, eight fields of research were honored: archeology, biology, chemistry, economics, literature, medicine, nutrition, and peace. Without further suspense, here are the winners in no order of winning order:

* Peace: plants are people too. The peace award goes to none other than the Swiss. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology, along with the citizens of that great nation, took the prize for passing a law that recognizes that plants have dignity too.
* Biology: dog-borne fleas are better jumpers than cat-borne fleas. Turns out athletic ability, in fleas at least, depends on where you live. Researchers found that fleas that live on dogs are better high jumpers when compared to fleas that live on cats.
* Literature: "You Bastard!" The literature prize goes to David Sims for his study on organizational indignation: "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation Within Organizations."
* Nutrition: it tastes better if it sounds better. This award goes to a pair of British researchers who confirmed the simple idea that food tastes better if it sounds better. For those who question the practicality of this research, it has already been put to use in the Fat Duck Restaurant, where seafood diners are given iPods loaded with ocean sounds to listen to while they dine.
* Medicine: placebos that cost more said to work better. While the true effect of placebos continues to be studied, Dan Ariely has demonstrated that expensive fake medicine works better than the cheap crap you get on the corner. (I predict a future Ig Nobel in economics for the exploiter of this one.)
* Economics: strippers earn more when they are at peak fertility. Ever sign up for psychology experiments while in college? I bet you didn't get picked for this one: a trio of psychology researchers from the University of New Mexico found that exotic dancers make up to 60 percent more when they are at peak fertility.
* Archeology: armadillos can wreak havoc on digs. It turns out that while armadillos are cool-looking, they can be very problematic at archaeological dig sites. A Brazilian duo observed that armadillos are capable of moving artifacts at dig sites up to several meters from their original "final" resting place.
* Chemistry: Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide. A 23-year-old study that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine finally got the recognition it deserves. An Ob/Gyn team from BU's School of Medicine found that Coca-Cola was indeed a spermicide and, oddly enough, that Diet Coke worked best of the then-available variants. The award is shared with a team of Taiwanese researchers who found that Coke and related sodas were not good contraceptives...

Each was handed a handcrafted plaque that stated (simply?):

This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize winner's Ig Nobel Prize-winning achievement

So, those are the winners of this years prestigious Ig Nobel awards. The researchers will join the ranks of past winners such as Don Featherstone (inventor of the plastic lawn flamingo), Kees Moeliker (observer of homosexual necrophiliac ducks), and Dr. Francis Fesmire (discoverer of how to terminate intractable hiccups using digital rectal massage) to go down as people who make us laugh, and then think.

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