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We’re all familiar with the Nobel Prize — a.k.a. the
most esteemed prize in existence — but I’m willing to bet that none of
its recognized achievements have made anyone laugh. That’s the beauty of
the Ig Nobel Prize, which honors “achievements that first make people
laugh, and then makes them think.” This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners
are no different — some are so outrageous they’ll keep you thinking for
a good long while. But as silly as the experiments are, the actual
science behind them is well-founded and even groundbreaking.
Similar to the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize awards prizes in separate
categories, but instead of a paltry six, the Ig Nobel Prize recognizes
advancements in 10 fields, which vary from year to year. Besides some
mainstay prizes like Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology, past years have
also included the Acoustics Prize, Transportation Planning Prize, and
Fluid Dynamics Prize.
Organized by the scientific humor publication Annals of Improbable
Research and co-sponsored by two Harvard University science
associations, the award ceremony takes place every September in
Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. As kooky as the awards are — the official
mascot of the Ig Nobel Prize is “The Stinker,” a fallen-over version of
The Thinker — the prizes are handed out by actual Nobel Prize Laureates.
We can only imagine what they must be thinking when they hand out a
Peace Prize to someone who discovered — probably through legitimate
scientific deduction — that you can easily resolve the issue of
illegally parked luxury cars by running them over with an armored tank
(a real winner, from 2011).
Here, we’re ranking the winners of the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize, the theme of
which was food, in order of sheer weirdness.
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Physics Prize
Japan’s Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai
won for solving the age-old problem of slipping on a banana peel by
measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and
between a banana skin and the floor. |
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Neuroscience Prize
Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee won for
examining what happens in someone’s brain when they see Jesus’ face in a
piece of toast, concluding that the phenomenon is perfectly normal and
maybe even healthy. |
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Public Health Prize
Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček, Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, David Hanauer,
Naren Ramakrishnan, and Lisa Seyfried received the prize for examining
whether it’s mentally detrimental for humans to own a cat. I could have
told you that one: yes, very much so. (Sorry, cat lovers.) |
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Economics Prize
The Italian government’s National Institute of Statistics received the
prize for taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for
each country to increase its national economy by including revenue made
from prostitution, drug smuggling, and other illegal activities. |
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Psychology Prize
Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons were awarded for figuring
out that night owls are more vain, manipulative, and psychopathic than
morning people. Makes sense, since nighttime is when all that brooding
introspection takes place.
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Art Prize
Italy’s Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea received
the prize for measuring the pain felt by someone being shot by a
powerful laser beam while looking at a pretty painting vs. an ugly one.
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Arctic Science Prize
Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl were awarded for their in-depth
experiment to see how reindeer react when they encounter humans
disguised as polar bears.
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