Ignominious Awards for 'Special' or Specious Research

"[The Ig Nobel Prizes are] intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

Annals of Improbable Research

Ig Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her invention (a brassiere that can quickly convert into a pair of protective face masks) assisted by Nobel laureates Wolfgang Ketterle (left), Orhan Pamuk, and Paul Krugman (right). Photo credit: Alexey Eliseev, 2009 Ig Nobel Ceremony

"We were looking at whether or not we could detect narcissism from the face. And once we found out that people are able to do that, the next obvious question that comes up is what is it about the face? And that led us to eyebrows."

"All publicity is good publicity. This is a fun award and I like the idea behind it, that it's about research that makes you laugh but then makes you think. Because just because research is funny doesn't mean it wasn't done well. All the research that was done was published in peer-reviewed journals."

"At the end of the day, it's an honour and a fun thing to be involved in. It's got a lot of attention, most of it positive, I think. Stephen Colbert just had it on his YouTube channel, so that was fun."

Miranda Giacomin, psychology researcher

All in good fun, and a snigger or two, as people  take in their breath and mutter 'and how much funding went into this research?!'. 'They did what?!' Since 1991 the Ig Nobel awards selectively honoured research and the researchers responsible for research that made not only the public that might have heard or read about it, but other researchers do a double take. Studies into subject matter so seemingly insignificant, offbeat and at times ludicrous that they elicited incredulity and laughter.

 

This year's choices certainly fall into all the categories that most people would think of as utterly useless, a waste of time and money and an indication of mindless scrutiny into absurd topics, the results of which fail to make the world a better place. On the other hand, there is the motivation of the researchers to consider; they, after all, felt curious and felt a subject matter worth the time and effort and managed to persuade some funding body to support their research and some respected journals to publish their conclusions. 

Ten Ig Nobel prizes were distributed last week at what was titled the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. As a result of the viral reality of SARS-CoV-2, a ceremony held virtually. With the added distinction and star power of Nobel Prize laureates making the presentations. 2007 Economics Nobel Prize-winner Eric Maskin, for example, contributed his presence and his gravitas to the ceremony by making the presentation to assistant professor Miranda Giacomin and her colleague Nicholas Rule; post-doctoral student and professor respectively, from MacEwan University in Edmonton's psychology department.

 

The distinguished winners of the Ig Nobels for 2020 were presented with a pdf file of a constructible paper cube, a certificate, and a counterfeit Zimbabwean $10-trillion bill (reflecting that country's 5 billion percent inflation rate under former President Robert Mugabe's misrule). And then there are the categories and the champions representing Acoustics, Economics, Entomology, Management, Materials Science, Medical Education, Medicine, Peace and Physics. A fairly comprehensive list of categories.

 Chinese alligators placed in helium chambers earned authors a 2020 Ig Nobel Prize.

Gregory G. Dimijian/Science Source

Alphabetically, Acoustics researchers drew their prize for having induced a Chinese alligator of female persuasion to bellow within an airtight chamber of helium-enriched air in their search to understand the medium of communication of extinct Archosaurians. Imaginative, no? While a study by researchers representing ten countries looking to quantify the relationship between national income inequality of various countries with the average number of mouth-to-mouth kisses in both, swept the Economics award category.

In a no-contest win for Entomology, an American researcher was acknowledged the winner with his study affirming that many entomologists are fearful of spiders; arachnophobia lives in the hearts and minds of insect biologists; women needn't feel squeamish about their lack of enthusiasm for spiders. In a bit of a diversion from Management researchers to hit men, five of them in China won the prize for subcontracting a murder contract and passing the job along with diminishing payouts, for a job that was never completed.

The prize for Materials Science saw no contenders that could quite match the fanciful research that researchers from the U.S. and U.K. embarked upon when they proved that knives produced from frozen human feces failed to work for their intended task. Leaders in nine countries jointly shared the prize in Medical Education, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Britain's Boris Johnson and Russia's Vladimir Putin for their brilliant "use[ing] the COVID 19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can."

And then there were the researchers who diagnosed misophonia, the medical condition reflected by distress caused when hearing other people produce chewing sounds, earning recognition through the Medicine award. The governments of India and Pakistan rated number one spot for Peace after reports that both countries' diplomats engaged in surreptitiously ringing each other's doorbells then racing off in the middle of the night. Finally, the prize for Physics was earned by two researchers in their determination of what occurs to the shape of a living earthworm when high frequency is used to vibrate the creature.

Dr Ivan Maksymov and Andrey Pototsky from Swinburne University in Melbourne took out the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics with the help of an inebriated earthworm

ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics, Swinburne University of Technology