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The Ig Nobel Awards Celebrate Their 26th First Annual Awards Ceremony (improbable.com)
Thursday Harvard's Sanders Theatre hosted the 26th edition of the humorous research awards "that make people laugh, then think...intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." One of this year's winners actually lived as a goat, wearing prosthetic extensions on his arms and legs so he could travel the countryside with other goats. Long-time Slashdot reader tomhath
writes: The Journal of Improbable announced these winners:
REPRODUCTION PRIZE [EGYPT] -- The late Ahmed Shafik, for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for conducting similar tests with human males.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [NEW ZEALAND, UK] -- Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective...
PEACE PRIZE [CANADA, USA] -- Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler, and Jonathan Fugelsang for their scholarly study called 'On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit'...
PERCEPTION PRIZE [JAPAN] -- Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.
The Improable Research site lists the rest of this year's 10 winners, as well as every winner for the previous 25 years.
REPRODUCTION PRIZE [EGYPT] -- The late Ahmed Shafik, for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for conducting similar tests with human males.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [NEW ZEALAND, UK] -- Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective...
PEACE PRIZE [CANADA, USA] -- Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler, and Jonathan Fugelsang for their scholarly study called 'On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit'...
PERCEPTION PRIZE [JAPAN] -- Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.
The Improable Research site lists the rest of this year's 10 winners, as well as every winner for the previous 25 years.
'On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit'
To my eye, that seems like a study that could have profoundly broad applicability.
Every time you read the word "profound" in a text stop and ask yourself if its use is (1) warranted and (2) even has a proper meaning beyond trying to make the text look more profound than it is.
I do this all the time, and something like 19 out of 20 uses of the word profound are plain bullshit.
Have done some seemingly wacky experiments and have discovered how we perceive things or don't perceive things. A famous one off of the top of my head was having people count how many times a team wearing a certain color shirt passed the ball and finding only a few of them noticed the guy in a gorilla suit walking through and waving. On the surface of it, the experiment sounded like an Ig award winner.