Last October, the Ig Nobel Awards were given out in fun to researchers for work that never really deserved the light of day. For example, the Public Health Award was presented to the inventor of a brassiere that, in an emergency like an anthrax attack (but also of any other nature) can be quickly converted into not one but two protective face masks. One for the owner and one for a friend. Maybe they could name the bra the Mask’er-Raid™. See US Patent No. 7,255,627.
The Ig Nobel Awards are handed out at Harvard’s Sanders Theater, by real Nobel Laureates. Hence, the play on words with “Nobel” and “ignoble.”
Here are some more fun categories. For Veterinary Medicine, the award was given for discovering that cows with names produce more milk than nameless ones. Of course, this is bad research. It all has to do with bovine assertiveness. Cows with names are simply more “Bossy.”
The Peace Award went for examining whether smashing one’s head with a full or empty bottle of beer is “better.” The experimentation was in fact trying to determine the fracture threshold for human skulls. (“Mr. Bloviate, just indicate the pain you’re feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, as we go along. If you can’t speak, just pound the number out on the table.”)
For Economics, the award went to the executives and auditors of four Icelandic banks, for demonstrating conclusively that tiny banks can mushroom overnight into huge banks – and vice versa.
The Literature prize went to Ireland’s police service. They had written over 50 traffic tickets to the most frequent offender in the country, Prawo Jazdy. Unfortunately, the person is fictional. “Prawo Jazdy” means “driving license” in Polish.
For Biology, the award went to Japanese researchers for discovering that kitchen garbage can be reduced by 90% by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas. Of course, commercialization will have its problems. (“Hiroshi, we needed “giant panda” droppings! You ordered two tons of “red panda” dung.”)
And finally, the Chemistry award went to enthusiastic researchers for discovering that diamonds can be created from tequila. Not acknowledged, however, was the obvious fact that the results were highly suspect. The researchers had been drinking most of the data during their work up.