While most people are familiar with the Nobel Prize, few know about its mischievous little cousin, the Ig Nobel Prize. Imparting little cash but much cachet, the Ig Nobel Prize and its deliberation committee factor only a single criterion into choosing a lucky winner from thousands of nominees: the ability of a scientific discovery to “make people LAUGH, and then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the usual, honor the imaginative—and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology,” according to the Prize’s official website.
Every September, a gala ceremony at Harvard University hosts these nominees as the prizes are handed out by Nobel Laureates. Scientists all over the world anticipate the event, and this past September proved no less exciting. To illustrate the hilarity, yet almost exaggerated practicality of their research, consider one of this year’s winning research teams, Japanese scientists Kiyoshi Mabuchi et al who measured “the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that’s on the floor.”
While this conglomerate might seem like a joke, that is precisely the point; these kinds of research projects may, at first, seem ridiculous; but after the laughter dies down, the idea sticks around in one’s mind as possibly—in a theoretical universe, of course—quite genius. And though these titles may garner a few chuckles in spite of the eye-rolling of scientists with no patience for hullabaloo, it is refreshing to see a group of researchers who do not take themselves all too seriously. The spirit of ‘anything goes’ gives them freedom to run amok with their ideas, breeding fertile ground for creative thinking and unconventional methodology that exposes the world to a set of truths no less important than those unmasked by their no-nonsense counterparts.
As such, this article would be remiss without a brief mention of notable winners from years past, including the psychology prize awarded to Ainta Erland et al in 2012 for their study titled, “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller,” and the Peace Prize given to the SKN Company in 2012 for converting old Russian ammunition into diamonds. In the same year, the Literature prize went to the US Government General Accountability Office “for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.”
Others include the 2009 Physics prize that went to Katherine K. Whitcome et al for “analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over,” a question with the saliency running along the same lines as the 2006 Prize for Ornithology for exploring “why woodpeckers don’t get headaches.” Doctor Ivan Schwab in California explained that it is because a woodpecker’s brain is packaged inside its skull more tightly than the way human brains are packaged; and while woodpeckers will typically peck and bang their heads on pieces of wood thousands of times every day, their brains do not slosh around the way ours do, and therefore give them no pain. This research held no real relevance to the scientific community at large and remained a quippy title gathering dust for many years. However, during the last few years, people became curious about what happens to the brains of football players and boxers who bang their heads repeatedly; and as it goes, the Ig Nobel winners may have had the last laugh.
However, my favorite winning research team would probably have to be George and Charlotte Blonsky, a couple living in the Bronx who patented, in their words, “a device to assist women in giving birth.” This device consists of a large, round table with some machinery, so that when a woman is ready to deliver a child, she lies on her back and is strapped to the table that is then rotated at high speeds. The child thus flies out through centrifugal force. And while this seems ridiculous to non-science common folk and utterly absurd to those with any background in engineering to see the few points where the design of this machine isn’t entirely functional, it is the very creativity of utilizing concepts existent in nature—and capitalizing on them—to answer the questions our mysterious world begs us to explore.