Ig-Nobel 2019

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Seevio

Guru
Location
South Glos
The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday, September 12, 2019, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

MEDICINE PRIZE [ITALY, THE NETHERLANDS]
Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.

MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [USA]
Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique— called “clicker training” —to train surgeons to perform orthopedic surgery.

BIOLOGY PRIZE [SINGAPORE, CHINA, GERMANY, AUSTRALIA, POLAND, USA, BULGARIA]
Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, and Tomasz Paterek, for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches.

ANATOMY PRIZE [FRANCE]
Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE [JAPAN]
Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child

ENGINEERING PRIZE [IRAN]
Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.

ECONOMICS PRIZE [TURKEY, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY]
Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria.

PEACE PRIZE [UK, SAUDI ARABIA, SINGAPORE, USA]
Ghada A. bin Saif, Alexandru Papoiu, Liliana Banari, Francis McGlone, Shawn G. Kwatra, Yiong-Huak Chan, and Gil Yosipovitch, for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch.

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [GERMANY]
Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.

PHYSICS PRIZE [USA, TAIWAN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SWEDEN, UK]
Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.
 

vickster

Legendary Member
Is this meant to be amusing or something? :wacko:
 
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Seevio

Guru
Location
South Glos
Is this meant to be amusing or something? :wacko:
I find it amusing but if you don't, that's ok. Your post suggests that you are not familiar with the Ig-nobel awards. This is not something I've made up for laughs, it is actual scientific research. I removed the link to the references to make it more readable but other than that it's lifted directly from the website. See the post above for a link to explain things.
 

vickster

Legendary Member
I find it amusing but if you don't, that's ok. Your post suggests that you are not familiar with the Ig-nobel awards. This is not something I've made up for laughs, it is actual scientific research. I removed the link to the references to make it more readable but other than that it's lifted directly from the website. See the post above for a link to explain things.
Which is funded rather than funds being made available for something that might be useful rather than academics (or 'geeks' ) trying to do 'something' they think might be amusing and even 'thought provoking'?
Nope, still don't get it (and it's a horrible badly designed website).
Anyhow....
 

swansonj

Guru
The Ig-Nobels are essentially the scientific community taking the piss out of itself. I suspect, when any community takes the piss out of itself, it resonates more with people inside that community than outside. There might be a parallel with n+1 and the Velominati Rules - no one claims they are rib-tickling, but most of us within the cycling community can see that they are mildly amusing and land a few blows at the way we think and behave. But I suspect they leave a lot of people outside the cycling community cold.

Having learned that wombat poo is (allegedly) cube-shaped, do you not have the slightest curiosity as to why or how?
 

vickster

Legendary Member
The Ig-Nobels are essentially the scientific community taking the piss out of itself. I suspect, when any community takes the piss out of itself, it resonates more with people inside that community than outside. There might be a parallel with n+1 and the Velominati Rules - no one claims they are rib-tickling, but most of us within the cycling community can see that they are mildly amusing and land a few blows at the way we think and behave. But I suspect they leave a lot of people outside the cycling community cold.

Having learned that wombat poo is (allegedly) cube-shaped, do you not have the slightest curiosity as to why or how?
No it just seems a pointless thing for presumably intelligent people to waste time and money on. Are most of these scientists men perchance?
Same as those who devised the velominati nonsense?
 

swansonj

Guru
I am unashamedly intrigued as to why wombat poo is cubical. And I think the world is a better, richer, healthier place that there are people who are not ashamed to be curious about and investigate any and every odd unexplained phenomenon.
 

vickster

Legendary Member
I am unashamedly intrigued as to why wombat poo is cubical. And I think the world is a better, richer, healthier place that there are people who are not ashamed to be curious about and investigate any and every odd unexplained phenomenon.
Really? The First World maybe. This stuff doesn’t help the developing world imo. Assuming these scientists have genuine knowledge and skills, would it not be better for their time and (others) money to be spent not just on looking at odd phenomena that they find amusing? But on things that might actually be of wider benefit
Ok if it costs nothing and they just do it at home on the weekend with their mates, then fair do
 
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Milkfloat

An Peanut
Location
Midlands
Really? The First World maybe. This stuff doesn’t help the developing world imo. Assuming these scientists have genuine knowledge and skills, would it not be better for their time and (others) money to be spent not just on looking at odd phenomena that they find amusing? But on things that might actually be of wider benefit
Ok if it costs nothing and they just do it at home on the weekend with their mates, then fair do

Actually the cubed poo experiment could lead to new manufacturing processes as a new way to make cubed shaped products. Whilst the IG Nobles may not float your boat, they are based on real science,m backed up by real Nobel Laureates and you never know may encourage someone into science who could go on to cure cancer.
 

swansonj

Guru
Really? The First World maybe. This stuff doesn’t help the developing world imo. Assuming these scientists have genuine knowledge and skills, would it not be better for their time and (others) money to be spent not just on looking at odd phenomena that they find amusing? But on things that might actually be of wider benefit
Ok if it costs nothing and they just do it at home on the weekend with their mates, then fair do
There's a legitimate debate about whether the priorities of the First World are helpful for the rest of the world. You and I would, I suspect, agree that they are often not.

There's a legitimate debate about whether the problems of the world as a whole are likely to be solved by scientific/technical approaches. I'm in the camp that says that traditional technocratic approaches to problem solving (or even problem identification) are woefully inadequate, indeed often harmful, and if we are to address the world's problem we need a radical change of approach - but that, nonetheless, science and technology have to be a central part of what we do to address our problems - the scale of our problems means we can't solve them without science.

Separately from both those questions, however, is the question of whether the most useful science is done by the linear process of identifying a problem then embarking on the research which is designed directly to address that problem head-on; or by wider, curiosity-driven research, where serendipitous learning takes place that enables problems to be addressed in ways that would not have been uncovered by the linear approach.

This isn't about wombat poo (obviously), it's about the culture of research: what it takes for human understanding of the world to advance.

And anyway, who says that utility is the (sole) criterion to judge whether science is worthwhile?
 
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