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Amazing, making people listen to music NOT of their choosing results in distraction.
This is sooo far from science.Give them a nobel prize.
I mean Ig Nobel Prize, they earned it.
https://www.improbable.com/ig/...

... the honor of being showered with paper airplanes.

Ig Nobel, anyway. Especially the Ig Nobel awards, for science that makes you laugh and make you think.

        http://www.improbable.com/ig/

Like the real Nobel awards, I've never been able to attend them. They do look like fun.

I can see this research scoring a nomination for an Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year. For comparison, last year's prize went to Volkswagen AG for their innovative vehicle pollution control measures.

Oh I have much more specific forecast for Kansas. This winter's forecast also calls for flat, flatter than a pancake

Perhaps this invention will win the IgNobel prize for Peace, like the flame-throwing car alarm did in 1999.

With such a restriction we would have lost the the 1993 Ig Nobel Literature Prize: http://www.improbable.com/ig/1993/1993-lit.html

which was awarded to E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P.W. Armstrong, and their 972 co-authors,
for publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages.

That's actually more mundane mechanics. ;-)

http://www.improbable.com/2012...

I think you meant September 22nd.

Am I really the first here to link to this classic from the Journal of Irreproducible Results? http://www.improbable.com/airc...

"The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society"

What, you mean those dimwitted philistines don't understand or appreciate
Romantic Comedies Encourage Unrealistic Expectations: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2...

Study Shows Rich People Cheat and Lie: http://www.phillymag.com/news/...

Interacting with women generally makes men stupid: https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Cats Usually Do Land On Their Feet: http://www.improbable.com/airc...

Literacy Improves Your Chances at a Happy and Successful Life: http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...

Horses prefer bananas over carrots: https://www.smartpakequine.com...

Not to mention how many times we've been told things like 'eggs are bad for you' 'eggs are good for you' and reversed. ...yeah, I'm astonished people don't always take "science" seriously.

Chicken chicken, (chicken) chicken?

https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume12/v12i5/chicken-12-5.pdf

Who in their right mind would pay 4 million for *his* Nobel prize? I know pure gold doesn't really tarnish... but that thing is tarnished.

It would be funny if it were given to the people doing the ig nobels, to be awarded each year in the category "most bone-head racist research".

Dunning and Kruger also received the 2000 IgNobel award for their psychology paper "Unskilled and Unaware of It".
 

Handily in time to contend for the 2014 Ig Nobel price.

The Annals of Improbable Research is quite reasonably priced, and a good read.

After all, where else could you read about "Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Duck" or "Predicting when cows will lie down"?

You should have linked to the actual source. Wikipedia has a copy of the information, but the original source is often better.

This can only be made better by having a special category for people who have been nominated for an igNobel prize.

Can you imagine the hilarity of interpretive dance about a bra which "in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander."

I mean, come on, that would be pure comedy gold. I can see entire improv events around just that one thing alone, and the entirety of the igNobels would provide endless hours of entertainment and wackiness.

You could make the home edition and everything. Like charades, but with dance, and the oddest damned things you've ever heard of.

Me, I'm looking forward to dancing the one "for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas."

The Gideon Gono method of managing government money shortages. Of course it predates him, but he was one of the best at it. Now all you need is poorly managed and corrupt resource redistribution, a mad dictator with an unreasoning hate of Tony Blair, involvement in some unadvisable wars (... oh... wait... you have that..) and you'll be quite close to Zimbabwe. I should visit. It'll be just like going home.

Mr. Gideon Gono surely earnt his IgNobel prize.. But what I once heard from people was that an even larger problem than inflation and Mugabe was that of the "war vets": spent their best years fighting for their country, armed to the teeth, probably many with PTSD, and now for the rest of their lives living off their communities as little kings OR ELSE. Let's hope the USA can continue to finance the DoD budget for war vets' pensions the rest of their lives, OR ELSE?. Mugabe may be an evil dictator, but who knows the other Zanu-PF party people may be even worse.

PEACE PRIZE: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#sthash.YXMyvdvW.dpuf

http://www.improbable.com/ig/miscellaneous/nominate.html

...for an Ig Nobel prize.

This research smells like a future Ig Nobel:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/

Now, that should be worth an Ig Nobel, no?

Yes. It also won the 2012 Ig Nobel literature prize.

Apples and Oranges -- A Comparison
by Scott A. Sandford, NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California

http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

Being slightly more relevant, comparing how men and women learn is worth while. Even if they are different, both are trying to accomplish the same thing. Men and Women obtain an education and learn skills in an effort to be economically self reliant within a modern economy. Apple's and Oranges are both fruit products that can be consumed to provide calories and nutrition.

Trying to compare something entirely different (ie, the Geopolitical ramifications of the collapse of communism within the soviet union vs an Apple) is truly useless.

END COMMUNICATION

In any case, this is a very dangerous road to start travelling on. Who decides when "a group" is "too large" to have First Amendment rights anymore? Is George Soros, with billions of dollars, "too large" and likely to have too loud a voice to have the right to use that voice? Citizen's United was apparently "too large" to have the right to free speech, even though they were a corporation formed explicitely for the purpose of making political speech and were trying to buy airtime in the face of a much larger organized political party.

Good point, but there still needs to be a distinction from speech by individuals from speech by groups. My first thought is the threshold for permissible errors needs to be much lower for groups. Due to the number of people the data past through, in 1994 certain tobacco company executives were able to "truthfully" testify before Congress that tobacco was not addictive. Every layer increased the level of doubt and by the time it was at the executive level there wasn't any evidence. Then there is the issue of large entities being able to spend massive amounts of money to drown out the message of people. While it is reasonable to handle corporations as being similar to people most of the time, they are not people.

"The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

I think you have misunderstood the Ig Nobel Prize. It's not intended to mock the recipients. It's intended, partly, to reward basic (and sometimes not so basic) research into areas you'd otherwise forget might benefit from research.

"Are you ridiculing science?
No. We are honoring achievements that make people laugh, then think. Good achievements can also be odd, funny, and even absurd; So can bad achievements. A lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity."

http://www.improbable.com/ig/

He won an Ig-Nobel prize, but not a Nobel AFAIK. It mentions neither in TFA.

Indeed, he won the Ig Nobel together with Kruger in 2000, but the Ig Nobels are clearly different from the Nobel prizes:

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

He won an Ig-Nobel prize, but not a Nobel AFAIK. It mentions neither in TFA.

Indeed, he won the Ig Nobel together with Kruger in 2000, but the Ig Nobels are clearly different from the Nobel prizes:

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

I see what you did there. Don't think I'm not on to you. ... because I am.

But in wholehearted sincerity I cannot help but agree with you. Much like the chemist who decided to put an end to 'comparing apples and oranges' by carrying around a comparison of the IR spectra for both (and showing not only that they were directly comparable, but also that they are obviously quite similar chemically), I propose each software engineer carry around an abacus, just in case they day comes when 'digital' is used as a synonym for 'web-based' exclusively. ("Do it yourself!")

There are whole journals for "Irreproducable Results". And prizes too!

There are whole journals for "Irreproducable Results". And prizes too!

Wait, wait. I have this one covered.

(But that being said, I agree with you.)

http://www.improbable.com/2011/12/10/how-to-gamble-if-youre-in-a-hurry-colorfully/ Also, I would really want to know where they submitted this paper to ....

One wonders , will they win the Ig Nobel Prize for such gambling research ? http://www.improbable.com/2011/12/10/how-to-gamble-if-youre-in-a-hurry-colorfully/ Also, the father of the mathematics of gambling is really Edward O. Thorp.

In a similar, and equally amusing, vein, the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to a team of researchers for "demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine".

No, this is a different research group experimenting with some of the same stuff another research group tossed an article out about a few years back. That other group is known for doing weird Friday afternoon studies that have caught the attention of the fun scientists and boring scientists alike.

I thought the winners of the 2010 Ig Nobel Chemistry prize disproved the old belief that oil and water don't mix. http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2010

http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

So, do you think that these researchers are trying for an Ig Noble Award, or that it's pure coincidence that the primary application of their research is teaching computers to laugh at dirty jokes?

How about this
http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2011/3/7/comparing-apples-to-oranges-infographic.html
or
http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, to which these individuals may be more susceptible."

...OR "Shit shit shit shit I'm late for work I'm gonna be fired again!" gets to you ... Everytime I read one of these "studies" that "shows" stuff, I can't help but think that the researcher is a press whore or is just trying to get more funding by throwing out a ridiculously convoluted "theory" to explain a simple observation. After all, the "people get stressed out when they're late for work" hypothesis doesn't get you as many grants.

One fall Saturday night, I jokingly "reminded" my friend to turn his clock forward because of the time change - I said "Remember, fall forward, spring back". I figured his wife would catch the joke and correct him, and move the clock back an hour. Instead, he showed up for the 6AM restaurant opening time at 4 in the morning - which meant he must have gotten up at 2:30 AM ...

So he's sitting in the mall parking lot all by himself, wondering where everyone is, when the police pull up to find out why some black guy is just sitting there in his car in the middle of the night.

Maybe I can apply for a grant for stress caused by being early for work? I could get an ig-nobel.

I was going to nominate this for an Ig® Nobel Prize, but then I realized that the study was conducted by psychologists and knew it would be disqualified since psychological studies aren't really science.

Please read Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake.

That begs an interesting question for the bio majors here: What are the relative merits of dopamine and adrenaline? Can they even be compared, or is it apple and oranges?

Well, its actually rather easy to compare apples and oranges with each other.

Ig Noble... Here we come!!!

I agree, this is almost a shoe-in to win an Ig Nobel!

Spelling mistake, or light-brown brogue reference?

no, it really is spelled Ig Nobel

Errr, "Woosh"?

I've been laughing to the Igs for years. I'm making reference to the inspirational shoe-bomber, Richard Reed, who's non-exploding training shoes have since inspired a catalogue of imitators to throw footware at the rich, famous, evil and/ or retarded (or in the case of Dubya, all four with one shoe).

Ig Noble... Here we come!!!

I agree, this is almost a shoe-in to win an Ig Nobel!

Spelling mistake, or light-brown brogue reference?

no, it really is spelled Ig Nobel

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA, for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists. REFERENCE: "Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men," Manuel S. Barbeito, Charles T. Mathews, and Larry A. Taylor, Applied Microbiology, vol. 15, no. 4, July 1967, pp. 899–906. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Manuel S. Barbeito was unable to travel, due to health reasons. A representative read his acceptance speech for him.

Let me repeat a small relevant section of the above: Applied Microbiology, vol. 15, no. 4, July 1967, pp. 899–906.

I think these dog guys will be ok on the date count.

http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2000

PHYSICS

Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK), for using magnets to levitate a frog. [REFERENCE: "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons" by M.V. Berry and A.K. Geim, European Journal of Physics, v. 18, 1997, p. 307-13.]
NOTE: Ten years later, in 2010, Andre Geim won a Nobel Prize in physics (for research on another subject).

winning the nobel is of course impressive. winning the nobel AND the ignobel is beyond impressive

improbable research indeed!