Frankly ridiculous science
Sometimes they are mildly amusing.
Like the fact that the presence of humans tend to sexually arouse ostriches. Or the fact that you can have safe sex at zero kelvin. Did you know there is a concrete relationship between country music and suicide? There is a study on the nature of injuries caused by falling coconuts. Effects of ultrasound in cheddar cheese. Why the woodpecker gets no headaches. Does a swimmer move quicker in water or syrup? Invention of an aerosol for underwear that may help determine if a husband was faithful or not. Use of quantum physics for achievement personal happiness. Farting loud as a means of protection from excessive fear.
Some winners in 2007
Source: http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2007
A penetrating medical report on sword swallowing and its side effects.
Invention of a method to extract vanilla fragrance from cow dung.
A study that shows that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
A spellbinding manuscript exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.
My favorite this year – The US Air force won the Ig Nobel Prize for PEACE for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon – the “gay bomb” – that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other and want to make love, not war.
Ceremony trivia:
The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October — a week before the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced. Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater. Nominees can come in any attire they like. A speech is made on receiving the award, but not longer than a minute. When the lime limit is broken a girl named Miss Sweetie Poo appears on the scene to say ‘Please, stop! I am bored’ in a high-pitched voice. The closing line of the ceremony is always “If you didn’t win a prize — and especially if you did — better luck next year!” The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced.” More of the same at The Journal of Irreproducible Results.
End note:
Gaurav has chosen his research topic so he has a chance to win the Nobel Prize in every field except Peace and Literature.
Other mock awards:
Golden Raspberry Awards for bad film work
Darwin Awards for fatally foolish behavior
Pigasus Award for paranormal fraud (U.S.)
Bent Spoon Award for paranormal fraud (Australia)
Stella Awards for “outrageous” lawsuits
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“rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards”
Did somebody say ‘Sometimes’ in the last sentence!!!..[:)]
Yes! They definitely said “sometimes”. The reference publication is “Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats,” Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100.
I think I should work on this problem and refute that paper and change sometimes to “sometimes” to “most of the times”
I’d heard of most of these improbable researches before. Maybe it’s because the relationship between country music and suicide and woodpeckers and headaches is more interesting to study than say, the effect of pH on the conductivity of a carbon nanotube electrode?
Anonymous, the research that goes behind this is very well documented and is published with full details of scientific approach. I guess it takes a fair deal of creativity to come up with such things – inspite of the fact that they spend all their time and money in doing other research – deemed as “important and relevant” in the scientific community.
Thanks for dropping by. pH studies on CNT huh? Sounds like a lot of fun.
“A study that shows that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.” ………….. Wow!!! I was not aware that rats are multi-lingual. Ummm…. this opens up a lot of ‘job opportunities’ for them. Since they are nocturnal creatures….. and multi-lingual ones at that, they surely can be ‘productively employed’ @ the Call Centres/BPOs….. while the “Homo sapiens” can catch up on some “shut eye.
Just imagine!!! Foreign exchange earning rats!!! The FM should be ‘interested’… what???
Roshmi´s latest blog post – Piggy-Wiggy: "To err is human, to forgive divine"… Or is it _ _ ine… ?!!
#Roshmi:
I think that in today’s crumbling economy, people would be glad if any of this money goes into public welfare rather than utterly pointless research!