 "From Zebra cows to pizza-eating lizards, the winners of the Ig Nobel are…")
It’s a dream of almost every scientist to win a Nobel prize. However, few would wish to secure the Ig Nobel prize, a sillier cousin of the prestigious award.
And on Thursday (September 18), the Ig Nobel committee announced its winners for this year. This year’s honorees include a team of researchers from Japan who wondered if painting cows with zebra-like stripes would prevent flies from biting them.
What is the Ig Nobel Prize?
The annual Ig Nobel Prize is organised by the digital magazine Annals of Improbable Research. The prize is a handmade model of a human stomach, a satirical prize awarded annually to promote scientific achievement. It aims to “honour achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The event, with a pun on the Nobel Prize, is typically held weeks before the actual prizes are announced.
Who are this year’s winners?
One of the winners for this year was a team of researchers from Japan that experimented by painting cows in zebra-like stripes in a bid to prevent pestering flies. And it worked!
“When I did this experiment, I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable,” said Tomoki Kojima, whose team put tape on Japanese beef cows and then spray-painted them with white stripes. Kojima appeared on stage in stripes and was surrounded by his fellow researchers, who harassed him with cardboard flies.
The paint job attracted fewer flies to the cows, making them seem less bothered. Despite these findings, Kojima admitted that applying this approach on a large scale might be challenging.
Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza lizards preferred to eat. Yet, another group in Europe found that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades. The year’s winners have been honoured in 10 categories.
“Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an e-mail interview ahead of the awards ceremony. “The same is true of every worthless discovery. The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate ALL these discoveries, because at the very first glance, who really knows?”
Other winners this year were a group from India who investigated whether foul-smelling shoes impact a person’s experience with a shoe rack. Also honoured were researchers from the United States and Israel who explored eating Teflon to increase food volume, and an international team that studied if alcohol impairs bat flight.
“It’s a great honour for us,” said Francisco Sanchez, one of the researchers from Colombia who studied the drunken bats. “It’s really good. You can see that scientists are not really square and super serious and can have some fun while showing interesting science.”
Sanchez said their research found that the bats weren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol. Maybe for good reason. When they were forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered, he said.
“They actually got drunk similar to what happens to us,” Sanchez said. “When you take some ethanol, you move slower and your speech is impaired.”
Among the most animated of the winners was a team of researchers from several European countries who studied the physics of pasta sauce. One of the researchers wore a cook’s outfit with a fake moustache to accept the award, while another dressed as a big ball of mozzarella cheese got pummeled by several people holding wooden cookware. They ended by handing out bowls of pasta to the Nobel laureates.
What happened at the awards?
This year, the ceremony took place on Thursday (September 18) in Boston. The ceremony began with a longtime tradition: the audience pelting the stage with paper aeroplanes. In a quirky twist, speeches for absent winners were delivered by actual Nobel laureates such as Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
There was also a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year’s theme, which is digestion. Several people sang about all the challenges of treating stomach bugs and being feted by patients who bring them pizza and chilli dogs.
There was also a section called the 24-second lecture where top researchers explain their work in 24 seconds. Among them was Gus Rancatore, who spent most of his time licking an ice cream cone and repeatedly saying yum and Trisha Pasricha, who explained her work studying smartphone use on the toilet and the potential risk for haemorrhoids.
When any winner appeared to be rambling on too long, a man wearing a dress over his suit would appear at their side and repeatedly yell, “Please stop. I’m bored.”
With inputs from AP
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