Here are highlight reels from the recent Ig Nobel shows at the University of Graz and at the University of Stockholm:
Those shows were part of this year’s Ig Nobel Spring Eurotour. This was the full tour schedule:
— NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY, England
— IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON, England
— EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
— UNIVERSITY OF OSLO, Norway
— STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY, Stockholm, Sweden
— KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE, Stockholm, Sweden
— FRI TANKE FÖRLAG, Stockholm, Sweden
— ORF (television debate), Vienna, Austria
— UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ, Austria
— UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA, Italy
— NATUURHISTORISCH MUSEUM ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands
— EDINBURGH, Scotland
The shows featured MARC ABRAHAMS (founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony) and different combinations of these Ig Nobel Prize winners:
- MINNA LYONS (psychopaths and night owls)
- KADER ALLOUNI (using speed bumps to diagnose appendicitis)
- ELIZABETH OBERZAUCHER (mathematical analysis of the man who fathered 888 children)
- RAGHAVENDRA RAU (some business leaders acquire a taste for disasters that do not affect them personally)
- THOMAS THWAITES (living as a goat)
- LUDWIG HUBER (absence of contagious yawning in tortoises)
- ALESSANDRO PLUCHINO, ANDREA RAPISARDA, CESARE GAROFALO (organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random)
- HYNEK BURDA (defecating dogs align their body axis with Earth’s north-south geomagnetic field lines)
- KEES MOELIKER (homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck)
- PIERS BARNES (how many group photos are needed to ensure at least one in which nobody blinks)
- FREDRIK SJÖBERG (three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead)
- LAURENT BÈGUE (people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive)
INCOMPETENCE NOTE: The tour also featured tributes to the Ig Nobel Prize-winning (in the year 2000) study of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That study is called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”