Ig Nobel Awards 2003

prostoalex writes "The Ig Nobel awards for 2003 were presented at Harvard University. Hold your breath for the winners of this year's awards from Annals of Improbable Research. Engineering: the inventors of the Murphy's law. Physics: authors of 'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces' report. Medicine: the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents. Psychology: authors of the 'Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities' report. Chemistry: a Japanese scientist who studied a bronze statue strangely ignored by pigeon population. Literature: the author of more than 80 scientific reports on amusing statistical information. Economics: the man, who viewed the entire country of Liechtenstein as a large convention center. Interdisciplinary: authors of 'Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans' study. Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above."

Comments

I knew it.

[grub]

Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species

I always was suspicious of those damn mallards.. Their "Oh, I'm just an innocent duck" quacks and what not..

Re:I knew it.

[jdehnert]

Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above."

Oh goody! Pictures too!

Just try and imagine the conversation that took place when this reasearch was submitted.

I buy it.

[CGP314]

the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents

Makes sense to me. They charge a small fortune to go a small distance, and we still pay it. : )

Re:I buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they tell ya about their 20 years service in the SAS and how they think they should have jumped on Yemen back in 1976 but at the last moment they got called back by MI6 with whom the cabby himself has "very good standing".

One stopped his cab in from of my house and talked to me about his revision of JFK and what he thinks were the reasons behind his assassination.

Lemme tell you this, London cabbies are too smart for their own good. They know more about secret operations, international deals and about subterranean civilisations controlling us thru psychic waves than the entire MOD does.

And whatever they say... don't reply back.

best one

[ih8apple]

PEACE
Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.

Slashdot-proof copy of article

[Anonymous Coward]

The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced on Thursday evening, October 2, at the 13th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was telecast live on the Internet. (The winners will give free public talks on Saturday, October 4, at the Ig Informal Lectures, at MIT room 54-100.)
Click here for details.

ENGINEERING
The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it" (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
REFERENCE: "The Fastest Man on Earth," Nick T. Spark, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 5, Sept/Oct 2003.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: (1) Author Nick T. Spark , on behalf of John Paul Stapp's widow, Lilly. (2) Edward Murphy's Edward A. Murphy III, on behalf of his late father. (3) George Nichols, via audio tape.

PHYSICS
Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia, for their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces."
[PUBLISHED IN: Applied Ergonomics, vol. 33, no. 6, November 2002, pp. 523-31. A copy is available at http://www.culvenor.com/]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Culvenor.

MEDICINE
Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith of University College London, for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
[PUBLISHED IN: "Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 8, April 11, 2000, pp. 4398-403. Also see their subsequent publications.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Eleanor Maguire.

PSYCHOLOGY
Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
[PUBLISHED IN: Nature, vol. 385, February 1997, p. 493.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Philip Zimbardo.

CHEMISTRY
Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Yukio Hirose.

LITERATURE
John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about specific annoyances and anomalies of daily life, such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end; What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attache cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.
REFERENCE: 86 of Professor Trinkaus's publications are listed in "Trinkaus -- An Informal Look," Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3, May/Jun 2003.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Trinkaus.

ECONOMICS
Karl Schwarzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.
REFERENCE: and
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Karl Schwarzler.

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist

That's the Internet for you

[wirde]

Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.

Believe it or not, they actually have pictures of the act as well. That's the Internet for you, nothing but pr0n.

The Knowledge

[tinrobot]

...the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents

I think memorizing every single street in the city of London does make you pretty darn smart.

Though, London cabbies are certainly not short on opinions. Maybe memorizing every street also makes one think they know everything about anything.

Re:The Knowledge

[tiled_rainbows]

The scary thing about this that most london cabbies seem to be bigoted, racist, sexist, quasi-fascist, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wingers.

I always thought it was just due to the buildup of misanthropic rage from the job they do, but this research raises the disturbing possibility is that maybe their opinions only seem offensive to me because I'm not smart enough to understand them, and that they're actually right.

Genuine quote from when I took a cab last winter:

Me: Cold out tonight, eh?

Cabbie: Yeah. Still, if it kills off a few of these homeless people it's not a bad thing, eh?

Dead man walking

[Brahmastra]

Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.

Wonder if he can refuse to pay bills, citing death as the reason.

Re:Dead man walking

[enjo13]

He actually tried that and more:)

In an effort to prove that he was alive (it took something like 15 years) he did all sorts of funny things, like demanding a widow pension for his wife, invading government gatherings (to get arrested), racking up an insane number of contempt of court charges, etc...

All under that same principle.. he wanted to force the government to recognize his existence by forcing them to do things that you can only do to a live person.

Sheep?

[PsychoKiller]

'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces'

Let me guess, these were Scottish researchers, right?

SCO missing?

[mao che minh]

I'm suprised that SCO's McBride isn't on this list somewhere, for his spectacular achievement in Chemistry: Turning bullshit into gold.

Homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks

[metamatic]

There was also a study of sado-masochistic bestial necrophilia by jockeys, but it turned out the researcher was just flogging a dead horse.

Re:Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

[35ft_twinkie]

Not quite. Ugly people have a much better chance of being passed over as the choice to be a giant slug crime lord's next love-slave-who-has-to-wear-a-bronze-bikini.

Mercifully, the will just be killed.

more Nobel than Ig

[barakn]

I'm not certain why the London Taxi Driver study received an Ig Nobel. It was a beautifully done study. For those who don't know, people who want to be black cab taxi drivers in London take a 3 year course (3/4 drop out) to pass an exam. They have to memorize essentially every street in a 6 mile radius (street names sometimes change block by block) and significant landmarks along those streets. All this information they refer to simply as "the knowledge." It was shown that the hippocampi of these taxi drivers are larger than normal and are larger in drivers who have been driving longer. This study helped change medical opinion on the 'plasticity' of the adult brain and has important implications for brain damage and diseases like Parkinson's.

It'a an active field of reasearch. A similar study found that the hippocampus of the chickadee increases by 30% in the fall when it needs to memorize the locations of all the food stores it is busily hiding,

Re:Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

[big_O_of_n!]

Of course, corpulent humans prefer fried chickens, so it all evens out.

Re:"Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities"

[switcha]

I want clothes made of that stuff [bronze] dammit (and a car)!

So, you wanna be a pimp? ;)

Really Quacked Me Up

[ChaoticCoyote]

Having a platonic fondness for ducks, I was intrigued by Dr. Moeliker's report. Reading the paper left me pondering the nature of a universe in which:

• A scientist spends 75 minutes watching one dead animal rape another's corpse.
• Said scientist collects and dissects the deceased victim, producing a six-page report (with citations!)
• I actually read this report when I really should be doing something else with my time.

Perhaps Dr. Moeliker's work stands as a monument to the curiosity of the human mind, and the need to laugh even as we ponder insane questions. At least he didn't duck the issues...

Re:Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

[blancolioni]

Beautiful people have an advantage in everything.

Yes, we do.

And I'd appreciate it if you'd wear your paper bag next time you post something. Thanks.