News about the Ig Nobel Prizes — honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.
1998 Ig Nobel Biology Prize — The prize was awarded to Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac. The research is documented in the study “Induction and Potentiation of Parturition in Fingernail Clams (Sphaerium striatinum) by Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs),” Peter F. Fong, Peter […]
Kees Moeliker reports: Monday June 5th, 2023 is Dead Duck Day again. At exactly 17:55 h (CET) we will honor the mallard duck that collided with the glass facade of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam and became known to science as the first (documented) ‘victim’ of homosexual necrophilia in that species, and earned its discoverer (me) the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology […]
A few of the photos are not the right people, and not all the flags are from the correct countries, but otherwise this video by TopData shows a fun selection of one winner (well some individuals are actually part of a larger team) from each year of the 32 years (so far) of the Ig […]
In an essay called “Patience Amid Long Experiments“, in the Adventist Review, Justin Kim says “The pitch-drop experiment teaches our faith community some lessons.” Kim goes on to explain: “A parody of the world-famous Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize was established in 1991 to recognize achievements that first ‘make people laugh, then think.’ In […]
Counting moths is not as easy as it may seem. Jamm Hostetler, and collaborators at the University of Florida’s Natural History Museum, created a system to count moths more indefatigably than most people would be able to do it. It’s called AutoMoth. The heart and eyes of it are an Android app called BioLens. Biolens […]
“The Nobel Peace Prize had never been awarded to a character whose work has been to reduce armies and their weapons permanently. For this reason, in 1991, and with a didactic desire, an alternative Committee was created that awards the Ig Nobel prizes…” — So writes Antonio German Torres, in his essay [here translated from […]
“Cool? Or Just Clunky? The Fight Over Dashboard Touch Screens,” says a headline today in the New York Times. Without mentioning it, the Times report tells of the aftermath of technology that was honored thirty years ago with an Ig Nobel Prize. The Times explains: do-it-all touch screens, the nerve centers of many new cars, have […]
The influence of the Ig Nobel Prize slowly seeps into academia — especially in techniques for piquing people’s curiosity and attention. Here’s a new, 2023 example. The Harvard Gazette, in a report headlined “The snappy book talk: ‘When does that happen in academia?’ ” tells of an innovative event: “Scholars had seven minutes to explain […]
Robert Kunzman‘s earnest TEDX talk “Putting Failure In Its Place” does not fail to emphasize the success of the study “Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure,” which won the the 2022 Ig Nobel Economics Prize for its authors, Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda. Here’s video of Kunzman’s […]
Indian filmmaker Satish Kaushik, who in 2003 helped Lal Bihari, founder of the Association of Dead People, accept the Ig Nobel Peace Prize — and who years later produced a feature film about the life and death and life of Lal Bihari — has himself died. This report in Business Standard brings the sad news: […]