The Ig Noble Prizes 2016 amazed the public with their weird discoveries.
The Ig Nobel Prize of 2016 event was held at Harvard University. This type of celebration is known as the annual festivity of dubious science. Among best examples is the study of rats dressed in trousers and the study of personalities of rocks. This unusual celebration is the courtesy of the satirical work Annals of Improbable Research. Scientists claim that the purpose of this festivity is to present to the public research that has never been made on a certain subject, which makes the audience first burst into laughter, and second, think about the research that was conducted.
- Unusual researches were conducted by men of science.
- The audience was curious about the categories and the winning projects.
Scientists who have attended this weird celebration were given only 60 seconds for their speeches, a rule as old as the ceremony.
Now that we managed to find out about this strange ceremony let’s get familiar with the winners of each category.
The Reproduction Prize went to Ahmed Shafik. He studied the effect of wearing trousers on the sex life at rats. He intends to conduct a similar study on human males.
This year at Ig Nobel Prizes the Biology Award went to Charles Foster who lived in the forest, for several periods of times, imitating the lifestyle and diet of a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox and a bird.
The team made up of Robert Farkas, Gabor Horvath, Susanne Akesson, Gyorgy Kriska, Peter Malik, Ramon Hegedus, Balazs Gerics and Hansruedi Wildermuth won the Physics Prize for revealing why white horses are the cleanest ones, not being disturbed by flies. They also discovered why dragonflies are attracted to tombstones.
The Medicine Award goes to Christoph Helmchen, Silke Anders, Thomas Munte, Carina Palzer and Andreas Sprenger. They presented that if one has an itch on the right side of the body and he or she looks into the mirror and scratches the opposite side, meaning the left one, the itch is relieved.
The Economics Prize was won by Sarah Forbes, Mark Avis and Shelagh Ferguson, who, as a team, have studied the personalities of rocks, from the point of view of marketing. Isn’t that a weird research?
Verschuere won the Psychology Prize at Ig Nobel Prize 2016. He conducted a study consisting of asking a thousand liars how often they lie. After this, he thought about whether to believe them or not.
The Literature Prize went to Fredrik Sjoberg who wrote a weird piece of work. He had a three-volume autobiographical writing in which he described the pleasure of collecting flies which were alive and flies which were dead. His description of the flies is amazing.
Isn’t this an unusual Noel Prize ceremony? Although a lot of things you never thought about appeared in these studies, all in all, it may be interesting and useful to find out about these researchers.
Image source: flickr
