The Ig Nobel Prizes "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". It happens every year at Harvard University, and there are prizes for several areas such as economics, physics, chemistry, nutrition, and peace. This year's ceremony happened yesterday, and some of the winning research are really hilarious! I wish I could attend to one of those. My this-year favourites:
NUTRITION PRIZE. Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
PEACE PRIZE. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
ECONOMICS PRIZE. University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
Last year's ceremony had some very unusual ones too:
MEDICINE: Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."
Can't figure out what the hell they were thinking about when they came up with such ideas, or if the initial idea was good and then it deviated "a bit"... :) well well, the important thing is that some scientists have sense of humor!
3 comments:
I saw that two brazilian scientists are in this list too. Some bizarre research about how armadillos affect archeological sites by digging tunnels. Weird, but important, they said.
:P
That's right! they are from Sao Paulo. I guess they fit in my category of 'important at first, but deviated a bit' hehehe.. or sometimes it's just the output that looks weird :)
Well...it proves that science and creativity can live together.
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