People who do research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
Frans de Waal has died. Among his smaller accomplishments was winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012, with colleague Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. [The photo you see here shows them giving their acceptance speech at the Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard […]
The Nigerian news site ABTC raises a curious question about 2024 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize winner Bob Glasgow: Bob Glasgow children: Does Bob Glasgow have kids? By Seth Frimpong …Glasgow, born on February 28, 1942, in Stephenville, Texas, was a trained lawyer who ventured into politics, eventually becoming a member of the Senate of Texas. […]
Nippon.com is running an ongoing series of profiles of Ig Nobel Prize winners. They say: ‘The Ig Nobel Prize recognizes scientific research that “makes people laugh and then makes them think.” Japanese researchers have consistently been among its recipients since 2007, including a Bandai employee who won the illustrious prize for developing the Tamagotchi and […]
Several years ago, Dan Drollette interviewed Roy Glauber. Here’s a portion of that interview, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “Glauber was one of the youngest scientists in the 1,400-person Los Alamos staff, and afterward he went on to a distinguished career in physics… Glauber was known for his sense of humor, such […]
SAGE publications today (March 18, 2023) published this “Item of Concern” about “Bust Size and Hitchhiking” and other papers they published that were co-authored by Nicolas Guéguen [pictured here], of whom we have written much over many years (and about whom our friends at Retraction Watch also have written much): Expression of Concern The Journal Editors […]
Nuts are prevalent in the Journal of Nuts. Some (perhaps all) of its articles have interesting authors. One, at least, of the authors of the following article is notably, almost nuttily prolific. That article is: “How Did Globalization Boost the Nuts Production in Indonesia?” Eko Hendarto, Sandhir Sharma, Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia, Mohammed Khudair Hasan, […]
Ten new Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The winners, and a description of their work, are included on the list of all Ig Nobel Prize winners (1991-2022). Each winner has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. The faces you see in the image here […]
The radio program Audacious with Chion Wolf [on Connecticut Public Radio] took a joyous, 50-minute adventure ride into the world of the Ig Nobel Prizes. Listen to it online: “Laugh and then think: What it’s like to win the Ig Nobel Prize” Here’s the Audacious summary of what you’ll hear: Almost 1000 people have won […]
To the best of our knowledge, no academic has followed Ig Nobel Prize winner John Trinkaus’s lead in carefully, relentlessly documenting things that annoy them, tallying exactly how frequently those things occur. It’s enjoyable to look back, now and then, at the work of John Trinkaus. Trinkaus died in 2017, at which time we gave […]
Join us this Thursday for the premiere of a new kind of conversation: Two researchers, in different fields, explore each other’s worlds a little bit. Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, will compere. Here’s who and what: “(Improbable) Conversation: Physics and Psychology of Cats“, with physicist (and Ig Nobel Prize winner, for […]