> for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
This isn't absurd. It is currently thought that the stripes are NOT for camouflage, since simulated predator vision (such as lions) cannot resolve them. It is believed that one reason for the stripes could be to act as a deterrent against flies (how exactly, not sure).
In this sense, testing whether it works on cows isn't absurd!
The great thing about this award is that it’s often real and beneficial science.
The study debunking blue zones won, but it was some of the best science I’ve ever seen. (Removing false knowledge is more important than adding new knowledge)
Turns out the Mediterranean diet doesn’t help you live to a hundred, there was just a lot of pension fraud in Italy.
Turns out best predictor of Japanese centenarians is if the local records hall was destroyed in World War Two (because the records were replaced by non native speaking records clerks)
Of course Ig Nobel prizes aren't necessarily intended only for absurd or ridiculous research. Their stated purpose is to honour achievements that "make people laugh, then think".
Sometimes that means the achievement (or "achievement") is something genuinely absurd. Other times it's not.
Ig Nobel has been around a while. I wonder if there is an opportunity for them to add a feature whereby they (and donors) could _sponsor_ research in areas that would be considered candidates. Research that would otherwise be too trivial or arcane to be funded.
The winner for Psychology made me think, for a moment, about HN: "Telling people they are intelligent correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness: The influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism," by Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles E. Gignac. Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... . The entire list is hilarious, and also makes you think. Go read the whole thing!
This quote always comes up. I think it is worth pointing out the age of this quote (look at the video!). We (physicists) didn’t understand quantum mechanics then. We do now.
If you're in the London area at the end of October, the Royal Institution is hosting a special event where "Ig Nobel Prize winners will gather on stage to ask each other questions about their work"
> Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.
I thought it was common knowledge that it makes you feel like you could speak a foreign language better. I don't think it's that obvious that the improvement would be objective or that others around you would feel the same way about you.
(And of course there's a Ballmer peak in any case.)
Participants who consumed alcohol had significantly better observer-ratings for their Dutch language, specifically better pronunciation, compared with those who did not consume alcohol. However, alcohol had no effect on self-ratings of Dutch language skills.
Just because it's inert doesn't mean it's harmless. I'm pretty sure that if you shove a wad of it in your windpipe, you won't last very long. Also go check out water poisoning.
I was curious about this study as well, both because the idea seems genius and wildly unsafe. I mean, I know teflon is inert, but really safe for consumption in quantities required for satiation? I googled the paper's title, and here it is: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26810925/
The answer is that it's a study in rats, seemingly (from the abstract) a very successful one. Probably a bad idea to introduce that amount of "forever chemicals" into the environment, but the central idea seems pretty sound.
They should add Avi Loeb PhD powered obsession with the exploding traffic of alien probes crossing our Solar System....
Maybe the Galactic Council just opened a new discount shuttle route over Class 4 Civilizations areas like us: (Non-Fusion, Non-Warp and apparently Non-Skeptical...)
