A parody of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year in mid-September, around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced, for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think". Commenting on the 2006 awards, Marc Abrahams, editor of Annals of Improbable Research and co-sponsor of the awards, said that "[t]he prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology".[1] All prizes are awarded for real achievements, except for three in 1991 and one in 1994, due to an erroneous press release.
The awards were presented on October 3. Each winner received a medal shaped like a frying pan that makes noise when shaken and Cambridge parking passes that are valid from 3 a.m. – 4 a.m. the day after Christmas.[2]
Chemistry: Jacques Benveniste, prolific proselytizer and dedicated correspondent of Nature, for his persistent "discovery" that water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all traces of those events have vanished (see water memory, his proposed explanation for homeopathy).[citation needed]
Education: US vice president at the time Dan Quayle, "consumer of time and occupier of space" for demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education.[2]
Medicine: Alan Kligerman, "deviser of digestive deliverance, vanquisher of vapor", and inventor of Beano, for his pioneering work with anti-gas liquids that prevent bloat, gassiness, discomfort, and embarrassment.[citation needed]
Pedestrian Technology: Paul DeFanti, "wizard of structures and crusader for public safety, for his invention of the Buckybonnet, a geodesic fashion structure that pedestrians wear to protect their heads and preserve their composure".
Physics: Thomas Kyle, for his discovery of "the heaviest element in the universe, Administratium".
Art: Presented jointly to Jim Knowlton for his anatomy poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom," and to the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for encouraging Mr. Knowlton to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.[8]
Biology: Dr Cecil Jacobson, relentlessly generous sperm donor and prolific patriarch of sperm banking, for devising a simple, single-handed method of "quality control".
Chemistry: Ivette Bassa, constructor of colourful colloids, for her role in the crowning achievement of 20th century chemistry, the synthesis of bright blue Jell-O.
Economics: The investors of Lloyd's of London, heirs to 300 years of dull prudent management, for their bold attempt to ensure disaster by refusing to pay for their company's losses.
Medicine: F. Kanda, E. Yagi, M. Fukuda, K. Nakajima, T. Ohta, and O. Nakata of the Shiseido Research Center in Yokohama, for their pioneering research study "Elucidation of Chemical Compounds Responsible for Foot Malodour," especially for their conclusion that people who think they have foot odor do, and those who don't, don't.[11]
Nutrition: The utilizers of SPAM, "courageous consumers of canned comestibles", for 54 years of undiscriminating digestion.
Physics: David Chorley and Doug Bower, "lions of low-energy physics", for their circular contributions to field theory based on the geometrical destruction of English crops.
1993
Biology: Presented jointly to Paul Williams Jr. of the Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth W. Newel of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, "bold biological detectives", for their pioneering study, "Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs".[12]
Chemistry: Presented jointly to James and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, "dedicated deliverers of fragrance", for inventing scent strips, the odious method by which perfume is applied to magazine pages.
Consumer Engineering: Presented to Ron Popeil, incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television, for redefining the industrial revolution with such devices as the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone, and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.
Literature: Presented to T. Morrison, E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong, and their 972 co-authors,[13] for publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages. The authors are from the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Medicine: Presented to James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands, Jr., "medical men of mercy", for their painstaking research report, "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis".[15]
Peace: The Pepsi-Cola Company of the Philippines, for sponsoring a contest to create a millionaire, and then announcing the wrong winning number, thereby inciting and uniting 800,000 riotously expectant winners, and bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their nation's history.[16]
Physics: Presented to Corentin Louis Kervran of France, "ardent admirer of alchemy", for his conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion.[17]
Visionary Technology: Presented jointly to Jay Schiffman of Farmington Hills, Michigan, crack inventor of AutoVision, an image projection device that makes it possible to drive a car and watch television at the same time, and to the Michigan State Legislature, for making it legal to do so.
1994
Biology: Presented to W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and Wayne Hansen, for their breakthrough study, "The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops," and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency.[19]
Economics: Presented to Juan Pablo Dávila of Chile, "tireless trader of financial futures" and former employee of the state-owned company Codelco, for accidentally instructing his computer to "buy" when he meant "sell". He subsequently attempted to recoup his losses by making increasingly unprofitable trades that ultimately lost 0.5 percent of Chile's gross national product. Davila's relentless achievement inspired his countrymen to coin a new verb, "davilar", meaning "to botch things up royally".
Entomology: Presented to Robert A. Lopez of Westport, NY, "valiant veterinarian and friend of all creatures great and small", for his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results.[20]
Literature: Presented to L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, Dianetics, which is highly profitable to humankind, or to a portion thereof.[21]
Mathematics: Presented to The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.[22]
Medicine: Two prizes. First, to Patient X, formerly of the US Marine Corps, valiant victim of a venomous bite from his pet rattlesnake, for his determined use of electroshock therapy. At his own insistence, automobile spark plug wires were attached to his lip, and the car engine revved to 3,000 rpm for five minutes. Second, to Dr. Richard C. Dart of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center and Dr. Richard A. Gustafson of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, who referenced Patient X in their well-grounded medical report, "Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation."[23]
Peace: Presented to John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused a 24 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.[24]
Psychology: Presented to Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, for his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons.
No longer officially listed
Physics: Presented to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, for its seven-year study of whether earthquakes are caused by catfish wiggling their tails. This winner is not officially listed, as it was based on what turned out to be erroneous press accounts.[25]
Chemistry: Presented to Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne and DNA Perfume, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both of which come in a triple helix bottle.
Dentistry: Presented to Robert H. Beaumont, of Shoreview, Minnesota, for his incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss".[27]
Literature: Presented to David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison, Wisconsin, for their research report, "Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.[28]
Medicine: Presented to Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle, for their study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition."[29]
Nutrition: Presented to John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for luak coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak, a raccoon-like animal native to Indonesia.
Physics: Presented to Dominique M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and Andrew C. Smith of Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal. It was published in the report entitled "A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes."[30]
Psychology: Presented to Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of Keio University, for their success in training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet.[31]
Public Health: Presented to Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, and Ruth Nielsen of the Technical University of Denmark, for their exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold."[32]
1996
Video of the 1996 Ceremony, incl. several Nobel Prize winners
Biodiversity: Presented to Chonosuke Okamura of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan, for discovering the fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons, and more than one thousand other extinct "mini-species", each of which is less than 0.25mm in length.
Biology: Presented jointly to Anders Bærheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway, for their report, "Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches."[35]
Economics: Presented to Dr. Robert J. Genco of the University at Buffalo for his discovery that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease".[37]
Literature: Presented to the editors of the journal Social Text for publishing a paper composed under deceptive pretenses that couched an absurd but theoretically specialized argument about the nature of gravity in a mire of academic buzzwords associated with humanities departments. (See Sokal Affair for details).
Public Health: Presented to Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway, for their cautionary medical report "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll."[39]
Biology: Presented to T. Yagyu and his colleagues from the University Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland, the Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan, and the Neuroscience Technology Research in Prague, Czech Republic, for measuring people's brainwave patterns while they chewed different flavors of gum.[42]
Communications: Presented to Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions of Philadelphia. Nothing has stopped this self-appointed courier from delivering electronic junk mail to all the world.
Economics: Presented to Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan, and Aki Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, for diverting millions of man-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets.
Literature: Presented to Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg of Israel, and to Michael Drosnin of the United States, for their claimed statistical discovery of a hidden code in the Bible.[43]
Medicine: Presented to Carl J. Charnetski and Francis X. Brennan, Jr. of Wilkes University, and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle, Washington, for their discovery that listening to Muzak stimulates the immune system and thus may help prevent the common cold.[44]
Peace: Presented to Harold Hillman of the University of Surrey, England, for his report "The Possible Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods."[46]
Economics: Presented to Richard Seed of Chicago for his efforts to stoke up the world economy by cloning himself and other human beings.[50]
Literature: Presented to Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, D.C., for her illuminating report, "Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread".[51]
Medicine: Presented to Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport for the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years."[52]
Physics: Presented to Deepak Chopra of The Chopra Center for Well Being, La Jolla, California, for his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness.[53]
Science Education: Presented to Dolores Krieger, professor emerita, New York University, for demonstrating the merits of therapeutic touch, a method by which nurses manipulate the energy fields of ailing patients by carefully avoiding physical contact with those patients.
Statistics: Presented to Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta, for their carefully measured report, "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size".[54]
Chemistry: Presented to Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.
Environmental Protection: Presented to Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, South Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.
Managed Health Care: Presented to George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing an Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force (U.S. patent 3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth: the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
Medicine: Presented to Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.
Peace: Presented to Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing the Blaster, a foot-pedal activated flamethrower that motorists can use against carjackers.
Computer Science: Presented to Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona, for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard.
Economics: Presented to The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, for bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass marriage industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1800-couple wedding in 1975, a 6000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a 36,000,000-couple wedding in 1997.
Literature: Presented to Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve) of Australia, first lady of Breatharianism, for her book Living on Light, ( ISBN978-3-929512-35-9) which explains that although some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to.
Medicine: Presented to Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis of Amsterdam, for their illuminating report "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal."[63]
Peace: Presented to the Royal Navy, for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout "Bang!"[64]
Physics: Presented to Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Michael Berry of Bristol University, England, for using magnets to levitate a frog.[65] Geim later shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on graphene, the first time anyone has been awarded both the Ig Nobel and (real) Nobel Prizes. By 2022, their magnetic levitation of a frog was reportedly part of the inspiration for China's lunar gravity research facility.[66][67]
Public Health: Presented to Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullett of Glasgow, for their alarming report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow".[69]
"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")"
"for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed him (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 attaché 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.)"
"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"
"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"
"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"
"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"
"for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them"
"for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant — a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but probably not to their teachers"
"for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night"
"for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon — the so-called gay bomb — that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other"
"for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means Driving License"
"for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years"
Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan
"for inventing a brassiere that, 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"
"for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof"
Engineering
Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin, and Diane Gendron
"for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm"
"for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important"
"for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things, when they have a strong urge to urinate"
"for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him"
Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford
"for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon"
"for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not"
Bert Tolkamp, Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford, David Roberts, and Colin Morgan
"for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again"
Alberto Minetti, Yuri Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, and Francesco Lacquaniti
"for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon"
Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde
"for the medical techniques described in their report Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck"
"for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane’s specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival"
Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea
"for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam"
Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda
"for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants"
Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga
"for their study titled Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages"
Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai
"for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that’s on the floor"
The 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony took place on 17 September 2015 and was held at the Harvard's Sanders Theatre.
Category
Winner(s)
Rationale
Refs
Biology
Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez, José Iriarte-Díaz
"for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked"
Callum Ormonde, Colin Raston, Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, and Gregory Weiss
"for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg"
"for discovering that many business leaders developed during childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that — for them — had no dire personal consequences"
"for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm), and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft)"
Gábor Horváth, Miklós Blahó, György Kriska, Ramón Hegedüs, Balázs Gerics, Róbert Farkas, Susanne Åkesson, Péter Malik, and Hansruedi Wildermuth
"for discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones"
"for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested"
Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger
"for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa)."
Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte
"for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother's vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother's belly"
"for calculating that the caloric intake from a human-cannibalism diet is significantly lower than the caloric intake from most other traditional meat diets"
"for using postage stamps to test whether the male sexual organ is functioning properly—as described in their study Nocturnal Penile Tumescence Monitoring With Stamps"
Christopher Watkins, Juan David Leongómez, Jeanne Bovet, Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz, Max Korbmacher, Marco Antônio Corrêa Varella, Ana Maria Fernandez, Danielle Wagstaff, and Samuela Bolgan
"for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries' national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing"
Xi Guang-An, Mo Tian-Xiang, Yang Kang-Sheng, Yang Guang-Sheng, and Ling Xian Si
"five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder"
"for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can"
Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar
"for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries"
Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer, and Jonathan Williams
"for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching"
Robin Radcliffe, Mark Jago, Peter Morkel, Estelle Morkel, Pierre du Preez, Piet Beytell, Birgit Kotting, Bakker Manuel, Jan Hendrik du Preez, Michele Miller, Julia Felippe, Stephen Parry, and Robin Gleed
"for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside-down"
The 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place on Thursday, 15 September 2022, and was presented in a webcast format.[343]
Category
Winner(s)
Rationale
Refs
Applied Cardiology
Eliska Prochazkova, Elio Sjak-Shie, Friederike Behrens, Daniel Lindh, and Mariska Kret
"for seeking and finding evidence that when new romantic partners meet for the first time, and feel attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize"
Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski
"for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure"
Junhui Wu, Szabolcs Számadó, Pat Barclay, Bianca Beersma, Terence Dores Cruz, Sergio Lo Iacono, Annika Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Przepiorka, Leo Tiokhin and Paul Van Lange
"for developing an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie"
"for inventing the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a variety of technologies — including a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link — to monitor and quickly analyze the substances that humans excrete"
Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido
Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari
Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel
"for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects"
Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti
"for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause of unpleasantness"
↑All companies except for Arthur Andersen were forced to restate their financial reports due to false or incorrect accounting. Arthur Andersen was the accounting firm most identified with the scandals, having been indicted on criminal charges stemming from its actions as auditor of Enron.[citation needed] See Enron scandal and Accounting scandals for more details.
↑86 of John Trinkaus' publications are listed in a special issue of Annals of Improbable Research.[97]
↑It has been suggested that the study of this phenomenon has had major political consequences. Following the sensational stranding of a Soviet submarine deep inside Swedish waters on 27 October 1981, the Swedish navy initiated a large-scale campaign to guard Swedish territorial waters from the perceived threat of infiltration by foreign submarines, despite the Soviets consistently asserting that the stranding had occurred due to navigational errors. The "submarine hunts", which lasted throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, have been a heavily debated issue in Sweden, as to whether or not there ever was any factual substance to the claims of Soviet infiltration. One widely reported piece of "evidence" were several sound recordings of what the Swedish navy suspected to be foreign submarines. Oceanographers and marine biologists were invited to study the recordings and would eventually find that the sounds heard were most probably produced not by submarines, but in fact were the noises made when herring passed gas. In a reportage by the Swedish science magazine "Vetenskapens värld" ("World of science") televised on 16 April 2012, it's suggested that these findings were important in putting an end to the costly "submarine hunts" which had continued for more than a decade, with Ig Nobel laureate Håkan Westerberg guessing that this would have saved Swedish tax payers hundreds of millions in SEK.[103]
↑Toscanini's, a well-known ice cream parlour based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, introduced a new ice cream flavour at the Ig Nobel Ceremony in honour of Mayu Yamamoto's work, called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist".[150]
12Zoltan Egeresi, a Californian inventor, filed a similar patent for a net-trapping device in 2003, taking inspiration from Kuo Cheng Hsieh's 2001 anti-bank-robbing device (winner of the 2007 Ig Nobel Economics Prize) and simplifying Gustano Pizzo's anti-hijacking device from early 1970s (winner of the 2013 Ig Nobel Safety Engineering Prize).[152]
↑The ceremony was attended by Karolina Lewestam, a Polish citizen and holder of a Polish driver's license, who "expressed her good wishes to the Irish police service" on behalf of all Polish licensed drivers.[178]
↑Harold Camping later admitted his predictions were wrong and that he regrets his misdeeds.[202]
↑The award ceremony was attended by Shiguru Watanabe and his adult sons, who were some of the subjects of the study when they were children 35 years prior.
↑This prize builds on research by Horváth et al. (2010), the authors of whom were awarded the 2016 Ig Nobel Physics Prize.
↑"Home" (in Russian). Ineos.ac.ru. Archived from the original on 28 June 2007. Retrieved 4 August 2013.
↑Kanda, F.; Yagi, E.; Fukuda, M.; Nakajima, K.; Ohta, T.; Nakata, O. (1990). "Elucidation of chemical compounds responsible for foot malodour". The British Journal of Dermatology. 122 (6): 771–776. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2133.1990.tb06265.x. PMID2369557. S2CID6343521.
↑Robert W Faid. 1988. Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come? Tulsa, Okla: Victory House Publishers. ISBN978-0-932081-19-3
↑Nolan, J. F.; Stillwell, T. J.; Sands Jr, J. P. (1990). "Acute management of the zipper-entrapped penis". The Journal of Emergency Medicine. 8 (3): 305–307. doi:10.1016/0736-4679(90)90011-J. PMID2373840.
↑David Michael Jacobs. 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-671-79720-1
↑Sweeney, WB; Krafte-Jacobs, B; Britton, JW; Hansen, W (1993). "The constipated serviceman: prevalence among deployed U.S. troops". Military Medicine. 158 (8): 546–548. doi:10.1093/milmed/158.8.546. PMID8414078.
↑Lopez, R. A. (1993). "Of mites and man". Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 203 (5): 606–607. PMID8407518.
↑"Baptists count the lost. 46% of Alabamians face damnation, report says". Birmingham News. 5 September 1993. p.1.
↑Dart, R.; Gustafson, R. (1991). "Failure of electric shock treatment for rattlesnake envenomation". Annals of Emergency Medicine. 20 (6): 659–61. doi:10.1016/S0196-0644(05)82389-3. PMID2039106.
↑Improbable Research (17 May 2014). "Inspired by the possibility that catfish caused earthquakes". improbable.com. Retrieved 26 October 2016. However... we later discovered that the documentation for that was suspect. We had relied entirely on press accounts (from usually-reliable sources). When we found ourselves unable to verify those press reports, we retracted that prize.
↑Beaumont, R. H. (1990). "Patient preference for waxed or unwaxed dental floss". Journal of Periodontology. 61 (2): 123–125. doi:10.1902/jop.1990.61.2.123. PMID2313529.
↑Busch, D. B.; Starling, J. R. (1986). "Rectal foreign bodies: case reports and a comprehensive review of the world's literature". Surgery. 100 (3): 512–519. PMID3738771.
↑Shannahoff-Khalsa, D. S.; Boyle, M. R.; Buebel, M. E. (1991). "The effects of unilateral forced nostril breathing on cognition". The International Journal of Neuroscience. 57 (3–4): 239–249. doi:10.3109/00207459109150697. PMID1938166.
↑Georget, D. M. R.; Parker, R.; Smith, A. C. (1994). "A study of the effects of water content on the compaction behaviour of breakfast cereal flakes". Powder Technology. 81 (2): 189–195. doi:10.1016/0032-5910(94)02882-6.
↑Bakkevig, M. K.; Nielsen, R. (1994). "Impact of wet underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold". Ergonomics. 37 (8): 1375–1389. doi:10.1080/00140139408964916. PMID7925261.
↑Charnetski, C. J.; Brennan Jr, F. X.; Harrison, J. F. (1998). "Effect of music and auditory stimuli on secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA)". Perceptual and Motor Skills. 87 (3 Pt 2): 1163–1170. doi:10.2466/pms.1998.87.3f.1163. PMID10052073. S2CID23661382.
↑J. Benveniste; P. Jurgens, W. Hsueh and J. Aissa ( 21–26 February 1997). "Transatlantic Transfer of Digitized Antigen Signal by Telephone Link". Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
↑Fong, P. P.; Huminski, P. T.; D'Urso, L. M. (1998). "Induction and potentiation of parturition in fingernail clams (Sphaerium striatinum) by selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs)". Journal of Experimental Zoology. 280 (3): 260–264. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-010X(19980215)280:3<260::AID-JEZ7>3.0.CO;2-L. PMID9472482.
↑Engr. Dennis D. "Richard Seed". Humancloning.org. Retrieved 4 August 2013.
↑Sidoli, M. (1996). "Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread". Journal of Analytical Psychology. 41 (2): 165–178. doi:10.1111/j.1465-5922.1996.00165.x.
↑Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine ( ISBN978-0-553-34869-9) et al.
↑Siminoski, K.; Bain, J. (1988). "The relationships among height, penile length, and foot size". Annals of Sex Research. 6 (3): 231–235. doi:10.1007/BF00849563. S2CID198915780.
↑Wassersug, Richard (July 1971). "On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica". The American Midland Naturalist. 86 (1): 101–109. doi:10.2307/2423690. JSTOR2423690.
↑Marazziti, D.; Akiskal, H. S.; Rossi, A.; Cassano, G. B. (1999). "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love". Psychological Medicine. 29 (3): 741–745. doi:10.1017/S0033291798007946. PMID10405096. S2CID12630172.
↑"China building "Artificial Moon" that simulates low gravity with magnets". Futurism.com. Recurrent Ventures. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2022. Interestingly, the facility was partly inspired by previous research conducted by Russian physicist Andrew Geim in which he floated a frog with a magnet. The experiment earned Geim the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics, a satirical award given to unusual scientific research. It's cool that a quirky experiment involving floating a frog could lead to something approaching an honest-to-God antigravity chamber.
↑Kaswell, Alice Shirrell; Gorman, Rachael Moeller (2003). "Trinkaus — An Informal Look". Annals of Improbable Research. Vol.9, no.3. Improbable Research. Archived from the original on 24 September 2012.
↑"Blink-free photos, guaranteed". Velocity: Science in Motion. Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. June 2006. Archived from the original on 24 September 2013.
↑Bertenshaw, Catherine; Rowlinson, Peter (2009). "Exploring Stock Managers' Perceptions of the Human—Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production". Anthrozoös. 22 (1). Informa UK Limited: 59–69. doi:10.2752/175303708x390473. ISSN0892-7936. S2CID145538403.
↑Senders, J. W.; Kristofferson, A. B.; Levison, W. H.; Deitrich, C. W.; Ward, J. L. (1967). "The Attentional Demand of Automobile Driving"(PDF). Highway Research Record. 195: 15–33. Retrieved 20 December 2025.
↑Kurihara, Kazutaka; Tsukada, Koji (2012). "SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback". arXiv:1202.6106 [cs.HC].
↑"Notizia - Sec 2010" (in Italian). ISTAT. 28 January 2014. Retrieved 15 December 2025. Tuttavia una delle riserve trasversali ha una rilevanza maggiore e riguarda l'inserimento nei conti delle attività illegali, in ottemperanza al principio di esaustività, già introdotto dal Sec 95: le stime devono dunque comprendere tutte le attività che producono reddito, indipendentemente dal loro status giuridico. Le attività illegali di cui tutti i paesi devono inserire una stima nei conti (e quindi nel Pil) sono: traffico di sostanze stupefacenti, servizi della prostituzione e contrabbando (di sigarette o alcol). La metodologia di stima della dimensione economica di tali attività è coerente con le linee guida stabilite da Eurostat.
↑Thwaites, Thomas (17 May 2016). GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human (one man's journey to leave humanity behind and become like a goat). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN978-1-61689-405-4.
↑Foster, Charles (2016). Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN978-1-78125-534-6.
↑Becher, Paul G.; Lebreton, Sebastien; Wallin, Erika A.; Hedenström, Erik; Borrero, Felipe; Bengtsson, Marie; Joerger, Volker; Witzgall, Peter (2018). "The Scent of the Fly". Journal of Chemical Ecology. 44 (5): 431–435. doi:10.1007/s10886-018-0950-4. ISSN0098-0331. PMID29611073. Retrieved 14 December 2025.
↑"Past Ig Winners". Improbable Research. 1 August 2006. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
↑Schötz, Susanne; Eklund, Robert (2011). "A comparative acoustic analysis of purring in four cats"(PDF). Quarterly Progress and Status Report TMH-QPSR, Volume 51, 2011. Proceedings from Fonetik 2011. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 8–10 June 2011: 9–12.
↑Schötz, Susanne; van de Weijer, Joost (2014). "A Study of Human Perception of Intonation in Domestic Cat Meows"(PDF). Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody (N.Campbell, D.Gibbon and D.Hirst (Eds.)). Dublin, Ireland, 20–23 May 2014. Archived from the original(PDF) on 23 July 2020. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
↑Park, Seung-min; Won, Daeyoun D.; Lee, Brian J.; Escobedo, Diego; Esteva, Andre; Aalipour, Amin; Ge, T. Jessie; Kim, Jung Ha; Suh, Susie; Choi, Elliot H.; Lozano, Alexander X.; Yao, Chengyang; Bodapati, Sunil; Achterberg, Friso B.; Kim, Jeesu; Park, Hwan; Choi, Youngjae; Kim, Woo Jin; Yu, Jung Ho; Bhatt, Alexander M.; Lee, Jong Kyun; Spitler, Ryan; Wang, Shan X.; Gambhir, Sanjiv S. (6 April 2020). "A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta". Nature Biomedical Engineering. 4 (6): 624–635. doi:10.1038/s41551-020-0534-9. ISSN2157-846X. PMC7377213. PMID32251391. Retrieved 14 December 2025.
↑Willems, Marjolaine; Hennocq, Quentin; de Lara, Sara Tunon; Kogane, Nicolas; Fleury, Vincent; Rayssiguier, Romy; Santander, Juan José Cortés; Requena, Roberto; Stirnemann, Julien; Khonsari, Roman Hossein (2024). "Genetic determinism and hemispheric influence in hair whorl formation". Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 125 (2) 101664. doi:10.1016/j.jormas.2023.101664. Retrieved 14 December 2025.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
