Richard Stephens, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for his research about swearing and pain, has just won a writing competition for his work about smiling. The Wellcome Trust reports:
Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize 2014: The winners are…
22 OCT, 2014The winners of the fourth Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize were announced this evening at a ceremony held at Wellcome Trust HQ in London. With over 600 entries to choose from, picking a single winner in each category was no simple task… Split into two categories – professional scientists (postgraduate and above) and non-professionals (including undergraduates)…
the judges picked Richard Stephens and Kate Széll as this year’s winners. Richard’s piece on smiling – ‘Don’t say cheese, say cheeks’ – earned him the crown (okay, trophy!) in the professional scientists category, while Kate’s article on facial blindness entitled ‘Prosopagnosia – a common problem, commonly overlooked’ was the winner of the non-professional and undergraduate category.
Richard Stephens and two of his students (all of them at Keele University) were awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel peace prize for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain. (REFERENCE: “Swearing as a Response to Pain,” Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston, Neuroreport, vol. 20 , no. 12, 2009, pp. 1056-60.)