The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. We are releasing these lectures one at a time. The 2021 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was […]
Tag: Beards
Is Facial Hair Biologically-Hazardous When a Pandemic Looms?
As a newly discovered corona virus spreads through an increasingly anxious world, advice is being offered—and sometimes mocked—about the mundane-seeming question of facial hair. The basic safety question was investigated more than fifty years ago—and that investigation was honored ten years ago with an Ig Nobel Prize. Also: Today the Trump administration took a new […]
A collection of psychological research concerning beards
The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest has digested some of the psychological research concerning beards. Like beards themselves, that research comes in a both impressive and dismaying variety of quality.
Beards and moustaches – the health benefits
An excess of electromagnetic radiation in the ultraviolet waveband can cause severe damage to skin cells and their DNA. Fortunately, various natural protection mechanisms exist, but until recently, one has been almost entirely overlooked in the dosimetric literature. New details are revealed in the latest (July 2012) edition of the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry, which […]
Facial hirsutism tax revival?
In the current hard-pressed fiscal scenario, many governments are struggling with a tricky balancing act – how to come up with taxation schemes which can raise substantial revenues without losing votes. Professor Erik M Jensen of Case Western Reserve University School of Law suggests a new one – or rather the revival of an old […]
Test of a Hairy Theory
“Beards, Baldness, and Sweat Secretion,” Michel Cabanac and H. Brinnel, European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology, vol. 58, nos. 1–2, 1988, pp. 39–46. The authors, who are at Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, explain that [AIR 16:1]: “In 100 clean-shaven men direct measurement of the area of glabrous [in plain language: bald] skin on […]
Time for a Shave?: Does Facial Hair Interfere With Visual Speech Intelligibility?
Investigating the interference of facial hair with visual speech intelligibility poses the problem of accurately controlling the amount and shape of facial hair across several speakers while keeping the recording situation constant. Since it is difficult to find participants willing to grow and then cut their beards as needed, we decided to use artificial beards […]