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Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored
More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.
I know it's all in fun but seriously, just because research is funny doesn't mean it isn't meaningful. One paper was in knot theory, which is apparently a pretty large and under-researched area of mathmatics. Another was convincing people that their potato chips were fresh by playing crunching noises while they were being eaten, which I imagine provides insights into how what we taste is influenced by our other senses.
Don't forget, the point of the Ig Nobel Awards is to 'Make you laugh, then make you think'.
Too bad the Creationists can't come up with any actual scientific research, they'd win this honour every year!
Trolling is a art,
If they find something that will eliminate the need for chemical pesticides or at least find one that isn't potentially carcinogenic, and one not made from petro chemicals, I think the research is quite meaningful. There are a few diseases that are brought by fleas.
There was even more agitation over the chemistry prize, awarded jointly to rival teams - one from the United States which determined Coca-Cola to be an effective spermicide and one from Taiwan which proved it is not.
I don't see how any self-respecting scientist can sleep at night until this situation is rectified. I know I can't!
I got a catholic block.
Funny coincidence, I just watched the Fish & Chips episode of Heston Blumenthal's BBC series "In Search of Perfection", which discussed just the same thing. Blumenthal is the head chef at The Fat Duck, the restaurant mentioned in the article, and a major figure in the "molecular gastronomy" scene.
He visits a scientist in the UK to test the crispiness of different batter recipes, using an apparatus that analyzes the sound waves generated by poking the food with a probe. It's not the same scientist as mentioned in the Ig Nobel article, though, no idea if it's related to the specific research citing by Ig Nobel.
There's video from the episode online, the relevant segment begins at the 2 minute mark.
Take any university-level Biology course. You're thinking with your heart not your head.
It's probably a bot of some kind (Captchas are notoriously imperfect) which someone with an agenda is using to post on every board they possibly can. Usually the agenda is money related, but sometimes it's religion or politics. In this particular case, hard to tell - probably religion.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
Evolution has mountains of scientific evidence supporting it, your "feeling" has none. Who's trolling now?
Trolling is a art,
The official ig website with video, background and list of winners
"He says his work has implications for the way drugs are marketed. People often think generic medicine is inferior. But gussy it up a bit, change the name, make it appear more expensive, and maybe it will work better, he said."
Well I'd rather be convinced that cheaper medicine is better or the same as expensive medicine :).
"In the 18 subjects Miller studied, average earnings were $250 for a five-hour shift. That jumped to $350 to $400 per five-hour shift when the women were their most fertile, he said."
There's research that shows that women tend to actually appear more attractive during their most fertile days (and probably might behave in a more attractive manner too ).
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/52484
BTW there's also:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080226/full/news.2008.625.html
http://www.newlifeafterdivorce.com/Relationships/Married-fertile-women-prefer-single-men.html
Sarah Palin, is that you misspelling "atheist"?!
The "I'm not buying it" argument against evolution typically comes because humans do not innately have the understanding of the time scales involved, or of the nature of probability.
Humans don't typically pay attention long enough to visibly see evolution taking place. The evidence is there, but it may take effort to put it together, and they're unwilling to do that. (I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.) And lots of people don't understand probability -- look at gamblers and their "systems", or even try to explain the Monty Hall problem to someone.
And of course lots of people don't understand simply because they can't or won't make the effort. I have less respect for those people.
John
Simply looking at their posting, it's likely part of an attempt to spam Google into boosting the page rank for some of those NYT opinion pieces, or maybe to try to relate some of those stories to each other. (I'm not visiting or posting those links out of principle, so it's hard to say for sure.) They could be attacking just the search engine or possibly Google News as well. We can only hope that the Google spiders walking Slashdot ignore all "Score -1" postings.
I'm not sure why they didn't put hrefs around their links, tho. Maybe they don't understand /., or maybe it's just a bot.
John
(I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.)
No, that won't work. They'll say that's just "microevolution", and that it proves nothing about "macroevolution". This is the standard creationist argument any time antibiotic-resistant bacteria are brought up.
Makes sense to me. Maybe you're just not smart enough? Sometimes I have a hard time with quantum mechanics or statistics, but a good night's sleep, some solid study, and a couple of good lectures make a big difference.
GPL Deconstructed
Much of the winning research this year and previously was serious work on topics many find silly. This is what AIR is about (makes you laugh, then think). Most of the recipients take the award with good humor and, as a sign that science is actually making progress as a human social activity, they are not chastised by their colleagues. The title sucks. It came from the Telegraph, but it got passed along without being made less ridiculous.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Ok, you're not buying it. What hypothosis do you ahve that fits the enoumous amount of data?
Here is a clue, study it, understand it and stop arguing from Personal Incredulity*
Which part of evolution do you ahve an issue with? Because it is a rock solid theory with mountains of evidence.
"Don't try to defend yourself by saying "but I didn't say anything about evolution" because that is your counter argument to the Creationist..."
Sine he didn't say that, how do you know that? Maybe he believes it was couched up from a giant space cat the magical bless new creatures every generation.
*see number 5:
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/logicalfallacies.asp
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That won't work becasue they would use the moving goal post fallacy, among others.
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans. They just don't want to believe, so they don't. They want others to believe so the make stuff up. The fact that none of what they say about evolution is true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To be a social liberal, one must accept social conservatives' right to hold and express their their ideas, however stupid. The ACLU stands up for the free speech rights of even those on the far far right, neo-Nazis and the KKK.
Being a social liberal does not, however, mean refraining from exercising your own free speech rights to tell these people that they are full of shit.
Social conservatives, on the other hand, advocate inequality under the law for people whose opinions or actions they find distasteful. In their eyes, those who believe in and practice "traditional values" should be granted special legal rights.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Knot theory is a significant and active branch of topology. It is certainly not "under-researched" in any sense in which the expression can be applied to mathematics. In other words, it is not like there are obvious results left undiscovered because people don't care about the field. While knot theorists would certainly think that we should work on it more, in that they are no different than other mathematicians: most people think the problems in their field are the most interesting ones -- otherwise they wouldn't be working on them!
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans.
Go on ..
I am sure that knot theory would be useful to cosmologists studying string theory.
If you breed those e.coli and at the end of the breeding process they have turned into unikonts be sure to let us know.
It's funny that they have rewards for irrelevant research but I'm sure a lot of the research honored here is relevant and useful.
The OP could at least have mentioned up front that this was about the Ig Nobel. That would catch peoples' eyes... the given title did not.
I remember a story posted here on /. about a scientist that found a mutation on his bacterias that allowed them to metabolize methane. IIRC, it happened in the range of 20K to 40K generations. The unikonts you mentioned seem to be very hard to happen given our lifespan, but after 10^10 generations it is not that difficult to think happening.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans.
Go on ..
Nobody ever said evolution would produce a "better" animal, just one "more suited" to breed in the environment in which it lives.
Yeah. Think about that.
John
In our yard the lawn sure has added up to a bunch of inches.
Time to get the mower.
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