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I nominate this study for the Ig Noble Prize.

for every stupid project they come up with

Do you have any examples for this?

A few gems, sorted by year.

http://improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html I'd say that's pretty fair. Turns out they're quite similar, incidentally.

Here is a paper from a respectable peer-reviewed scientific journal on this topic.

it would be in ig nobel category

It smells like an application from a previous Ig Nobel winner: http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

except for "Call of Juarez" which uses a completely different set of textures and settings, so it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

No, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

(Sorry.)

Oh, and there's a huge error in the test methodology. Both DirectX-es were tested on Vista. Try repeating the test with DX9 on XP and measure the performance...

I disagree that this is a huge error in methodology. I think that XP+DX9 would have made useful supplements to the results they gave, but their goal was to measure DX9 vs DX10, and you don't do that by changing two variables.

Vista + DX10 vs. XP + DX9 would have been an appropriate test for serious gamers who make their choice of OS based upon the version of DX10, but I suspect these people are a small minority even of those reading the review.

Gauri Nanda won the Ig Nobel prize for Economics in 2005 for this invention.
I'm happy to see that she's final brought this to the open market.
http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig200 5

I actually submitted this story (via journal entry) back in September, but it didn't make it -- it happened at the same time as Atlantis was docking with the ISS, so I guess the editors didn't have more space for more space. When the craft was launched, Chinese officials were cited as saying that "seeds exposed to space radiation and microgravity contain more vitamins and other crucial minerals.".

Wow. I guess science class in China consists of repeated viewings of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes , or perhaps the Chinese scientists are simply polishing up their Ig Nobel acceptance speeches.

Does this mean winners of the Ig Nobel Prize http://www.improb.com/ig/ on average die two years earlier?

you mean a comparison like this?

http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v 1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

B.

Already are my friend. Already are.

I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who doesn't even take the time to discover that their sig is a misquote.

Which as it turns out aren't as different as they're made out to be.

Unless this is in the Journal of Irreproducible Results or the Annals of Improbable Research, then this doesn't belong in publication. Like another poster said, it's pretty straight-forward and has been answered many many times by individuals (myself included) via the mutation-into-chicken-embryo argument.

Funny, too, that this "breakthrough" is highlighted on a day when slashdot is carrying a story that while fourth-graders' science scores are elevated from 10 years ago, Americans' high-schoolers scores have decreased.

I wonder how long until we break the record of 972. This was in 1992. http://www.improb.com/ig/1993/1993-lit.html

I don't know if you noticed, but the author of the Guardian piece is Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, a publication which looks at genuine research in a mocking sort of way. They award the IgNobel Prizes for research which "cannot or should not be respeated". Abrahams books are absolutely classic.

The 2004 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

PUBLIC HEALTH
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

I know you already quoted part of this but I think this part of the FAQ is hilarious (as well as not being true). 3. How can I get tracks I rip from my CD into iTunes and/or onto my iPod? Apple's proprietary technology doesn't support secure music formats other than their own and therefore the music on this disc can't be directly imported into iTunes or iPods. Sony BMG wants music to be easily transferable to any device that supports secure music. Currently, music from our protected CDs may be transferred to hundreds of such devices, as both Microsoft and Sony have assisted to make the user experience on our discs as seamless as possible with their secure formats. Unfortunately, in order to directly and smoothly rip content into iTunes it requires the assistance of Apple. To date, Apple has not been willing to cooperate with our protection vendors to make ripping to iTunes and to the iPod a simple experience. Isn't it great folks?! I don't even need to add any commentary. I highly reccommend that whole FAQ the parent linked to as some *good* comic literature. The people who wrote this FAQ should get the Ignobel prize next year for literature, kind of like the Nigerian scammers got the award this year http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig200 5

There's a prize awarded for this kind of research.

Does this mean they'll have to forfeit their Ig Nobel?

"ECONOMICS: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday."

"PHYSICS: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years."

"FLUID DYNAMICS: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu , Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation."

You can find out tommorow when the IgNoble awards are released.
http://www.improb.com/ig/2005/2005-details.html

Last year the Chem Award went to Coca-Cola Co. of Great Britain for turning H20 into a cancer causing material.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,11 74127,00.html

A similar study has won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2004:

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol. 28, Perception, 1999, pages 1059-74. DEMO: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html

No, wear one of these.

Or just show up wearing nothing but a mailing tube and grease - people will leave you alone then.

No, this is comparing apples and oranges.

Just go ask Troy how much it's cost him so far...

Just in case, though .. the2004 winners were

MEDICINE

Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."

PHYSICS

Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.

PUBLIC HEALTH

Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

CHEMISTRY

The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert ordinary tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.

ENGINEERING

Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).

LITERATURE

The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it.

PSYCHOLOGY

Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit.

ECONOMICS

The Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India.

PEACE

Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

BIOLOGY

Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.

Just in case, though .. the2004 winners were

MEDICINE

Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."

PHYSICS

Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.

PUBLIC HEALTH

Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

CHEMISTRY

The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert ordinary tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.

ENGINEERING

Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).

LITERATURE

The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it.

PSYCHOLOGY

Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit.

ECONOMICS

The Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India.

PEACE

Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

BIOLOGY

Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.

would that be the IgNobel Prize?

Maybe they'll give you a nobel prize for verifying its existence.

Don't compare apples and oranges.

Why not?

This is Ig Noble Prize material! Last years Psychology Ig Nobel Prize winner won for "Gorilla's In Our Midst", showing that "when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit." Clearly, monkey butts is important follow-up research that also deserves a prize.

Cue the apples and oranges comparison: http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v 1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

I would like to see a study done on this, to see how close that claim really is. It would win an Ig-Nobel for sure :)

for which he won an Ignoble Prize. http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig199 8

I hereby demand a battle royale to the death between the homebrewed robot exoskelton and this guy.

This the original bad science .. alright then funny science awards!

Don't believe in cheap - ok not as hilarious - imitations.

From the country that granted a patent on the wheel? Oh, and FP!

Hey, don't knock Cold Fusion. Despite being a much shunned language, its other form could also garner you lauds and praises from the IgNobel Prize Committee. Of course, dabbling in alchemy always enhances your popularity in the scientific community.

That's flatter than the state of Kansas!

Then by conjecture, that would also make the surface of Titan flatter than a pancake! ... well at least those of the IHOP variety anyway.

For those who don't get the joke: http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v 9i3/kansas.html

Summary of The fastest man on Earth:

George Nichols: "The Law's namesake, was Capt. Ed Murphy Jr., a development engineer... Frustrated with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gauge bridges caused him to remark-- 'if there is any way to do it wrong, he will'-- referring to the technician who had wired the bridges. I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the associated variations..."

David Hill: "Murphy was kind of miffed off. And that gave rise to his observation: 'If there's any way they can do it wrong, they will.' I kind of chuckled and said, that's the way it goes. Nothing more could be done really."

John Paul Stapp: "we do all of our work in consideration of Murphy's Law. [defined as] the idea that you had to think through all possibilities before doing a test."

Dr. Dana Kilanowski: "at the time I believe Stapp said something like, 'If anything can go wrong he'll do it.' A couple days later there was a press conference in Los Angeles and Stapp said something like, 'it was Murphy's Law -- if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.' [...] I have heard that Murphy claimed he invented Murphy's Law, but Stapp is the one noted for his witticisms, his haikus, and his plays on words."

Ed Murphy: "I didn't tell them that they had positively to orient them in only one direction. So I guess about that time I said, 'Well, I really have made a terrible mistake here, I didn't cover every possibility.' And about that time, Major Stapp says, 'Well, that's a good candidate for Murphy's Law'. I thought he was going to court martial me, but that's all he said. [Stapp reeled off a host of other Laws, and said] 'from now on we're going to have things done according to Murphy's Law'."

Chuck Yaeger: "Look, what you're getting into here is like a Pandora's Box. Goddamn it, that's the same kind of crap...you get out of guys who were not involved and came in many years after."

And in the end it wasn't as extreme a failure as Genesis:

According to Nichols the failure was only a momentary setback --"the strap information wasn't that important anyway," he says -- and regardless good data had been collected from other instruments. The Northrop team rewired the gauges, calibrated them, and did another test. This time Murphy's transducers worked perfectly, producing useable data. And from that point forward, Nichols notes, "we used them straight on" because they were a good addition to the telemetry package. But Murphy wasn't around to witness his devices' success. He'd returned to Wright Field and never visited the Gee Whiz track ever again.

And the subsequent controversies...

is here.

(This paper won a prestigious 2003 Ig Nobel award for engineering.

W

And the subsequent controversies...

is here.

(This paper won a prestigious 2003 Ig Nobel award for engineering.

W

The namesake of Murphy's Law, Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was awarded an Ig Nobel award in 2003, fittingly, after he passed away.

Murphy's law has nothing to do with the Irish.

Anyway, has anyone else ever thought an article is based on a Slashdot post one made? I was thinking about the exact same similarities last week. :-)

Where's IG NOBEL when we need it?

They installed the switch backwards.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the origins of Murphy's Law. I recall that too was the result of some sensors being installed backwards...

I expect to see this in the Annals of Improbable Research. Maybe they're bucking for an Ignobel Prize.