Improbable Research

Stan Wagon built a bicycle that has square wheels. It gives a wonderfully smooth ride over appropriate terrain.

(Thanks to investigator Danny Lichtblau for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Stephen Black writes:

From the November 2006 issue of Smithsonian Magazine in which the psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh describes the abilities of one of her language-learning bonobos, Kanzi:

“Once, Savage-Rumbaugh says, on an outing in a forest by the Georgia State University laboratory where he was raised, Kanzi touched the symbols for ‘marshmallow’ and ‘fire.’ Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick.”

Not so impressive. He didn’t know a single campfire song.

Suggestions for potential Ig Nobel Prize winners come from many sources. Here’s one from a January 23, 2007 editorial in the Manila Times:

EDITORIAL
Questions for Karen Hughes

MANY Filipinos look forward to meeting Karen Hughes, the US State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, because this is her first visit to Manila, because they have many questions to ask her and because she heads an interesting but little-known office in America’s oldest Cabinet department. …

Our interest is in the plan [to develop] a system that would allow Washington, D.C., to monitor negative news about the United States or its leaders in newspapers, radio and television stations overseas….

Developing and carrying out a system of monitoring foreign opinion that costs millions and that creates a new bureaucracy sounds like an Ig Nobel invention.

Scientists looking at mice may have discovered why certain people are hairier than others in what could provide clues as to the reason some men go bald prematurely.

So says an August 30, 2006 Medical News Today article about Dr. Denis Headon (of Manchester University) and his work.

(Thanks to investigator Jane Kohner for bringing this to our attention.)

It is primarily designed to be read by scientists involved in the search for gravitational radiation who are curious about the outsider who spends so much time spying on them. I try to explain who I am and what I am doing.

So says Harry Collins about his pet project. (Daniel Davies and others have a thing or two to say about the project.)

(Thanks to investigator Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)