Personal Studies into the Mind

The Best(Worst?) Ig® Nobel Prize Winners

It has been a minute since I posted to this blog, so here is something funny I learned about recently: the Ig Nobel awards! From the official Website: "The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology."

A full list of past Ig winners can be found HERE. The official award bestowed to Ig winners is called "The Stinker," which is an award I would like to win one day. Until then, here are my top 10 favorite Ig winners:

10 - 2024 PEACE PRIZE(USA)

B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.

REFERENCE: “Pigeons in a Pelican”, B.F. Skinner, American Psychologist, vol 15, no. 1, 1960, pp. 28-37.

  • Reasoning: My first encounter with the Ig was this award, which I discovered while researching Skinner. I've put at ten because while it is peculiar, I think the Ig has much stranger winners.

    • 9 - 2023 EDUCATION PRIZE(HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN)

    Katy Tam Et al., for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students.

    REFERENCE: “Boredom Begets Boredom: An Experience Sampling Study on the Impact of Teacher Boredom on Student Boredom and Motivation,” Katy Y.Y. Tam, Cyanea Y. S. Poon, Victoria K.Y. Hui, Christy Y. F. Wong, Vivian W.Y. Kwong, Gigi W.C. Yuen, Christian S. Chan, British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 90, no. S1, June 2020, pp. 124-137. doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12309

    REFERENCE: “Whatever Will Bore, Will Bore: The Mere Anticipation of Boredom Exacerbates its Occurrence in Lectures,” Katy Y.Y. Tam, Wijnand A.P. Van Tilburg, Christian S. Chan, British Journal of Educational Psychology, epub 2022. doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12549

  • Reasoning: I was bored at my teaching job when reading through these awards, so this one has a personal connection.

    • 8 - 2007 LITERATURE PRIZE (AUSTRALIA)

    Glenda Browne, for her study of the word “the” — and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.

    REFERENCE: “The Definite Article: Acknowledging ‘The’ in Index Entries,” Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119-22.

  • Reasoning: Organization can be such a hassle, especially with alphabetized lists and the word "The," so this winner seems to be genuinely useful.

    • 7 - 2007 PEACE PRIZE (USA)

    The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon — the so-called “gay bomb” — that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.

    REFERENCE: “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals,” Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

  • Reasoning: Haha gay bomb funni.

    • 6 - 2019 CHEMISTRY PRIZE (JAPAN)

    Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child.

    REFERENCE: “Estimation of the Total Saliva Volume Produced Per Day in Five-Year-Old Children,” Shigeru Watanabe, M. Ohnishi, K. Imai, E. Kawano, and S. Igarashi, Archives of Oral Biology, vol. 40, no. 8, August 1995, pp. 781-782.

  • Reasoning: I work mostly with toddlers, and those little rugrats can produce an astronomical amount of spit.

    • 5 - 2017 OBSTETRICS PRIZE (SPAIN)

    Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte, for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother’s vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother’s belly.

    REFERENCE: “Fetal Facial Expression in Response to Intravaginal Music Emission,” Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, and Alberto Prats-Galino, Ultrasound, November 2015, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 216–223.

    REFERENCE: “Fetal Acoustic Stimulation Device,” patent ES2546919B1, granted September 29, 2015 to Luis y Pallarés Aniorte and Maria Luisa López-Teijón Pérez.

  • Reasoning: It is an interesting hypothesis, but I guess the question that should be asked is "why?"

    • 4 - 2021 PHYSICS PRIZE (THE NETHERLANDS, ITALY, TAIWAN, USA)

    Alessandro Corbetta Et al., for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians.

    REFERENCE: “Physics-based modeling and data representation of pairwise interactions among pedestrians,” Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper A. Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico Toschi, Physical Review E, vol. 98, no. 062310, 2018

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    4 - 2021 KINETICS PRIZE (JAPAN, SWITZERLAND, ITALY)

    Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama, and Katsuhiro Nishinari, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians.

    REFERENCE: “Mutual Anticipation Can Contribute to Self-Organization in Human Crowds,” Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama, and Katsuhiro Nishinari, Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 12, 2021, p. eabe7758.

  • Reasoning: The way these prizes contrast each other is beautiful: it really is a matter of perspective.

    • 3 - 2014 PHYSICS PRIZE (JAPAN)

    Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring 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.

    REFERENCE: “Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin,” Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, Tribology Online 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151.

  • Reasoning: The measured frictional coefficient was about 0.07, which is a little more than skis on snow. It's slippery, just maybe not as much as Charlie Chaplin would have you believe.

    • 2 - 1999 MANAGED HEALTH CARE (USA)

    The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth — the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.

    REFERENCE: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423

  • Reasoning: This is an incredible visual, unfortunately I could not find any proof of this device ever being used in practice.

    • 1 - 2020 MANAGEMENT PRIZE (CHINA)

    (奚广安) Xi Guang-An, (莫天祥) Mo Tian-Xiang, (杨康生) Yang Kang-Sheng, (杨广生) Yang Guang-Sheng, and (凌显四) Ling Xian Si, five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder.

    REFERENCE: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ibIkZBbnZb-menl7Xv4FAQ

  • Reasoning: Imagine how the guy that survived the hit feels.