Ig Nobel prize winners announced

Last Thursday, the winners of the 2013 Ig Nobel prizes were announced and you may be astonished at some of the research.

Ohio State University researcher Brad Bushman won the psychology prize for confirming that people who are drunk or think they are drunk are convinced that they are more attractive.

Another highlight was the Probability prize, which was won by animal scientists at Scotland’s Rural College for confirming that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up but once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon it will lie down again.

A Lund University team won the joint prize in biology and astronomy for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way. Interestingly, this is the first instance of use of the Milky Way for animal navigation.

Enya loses out to Verdi when it comes to prolonging the life of mice after heart transplants. A Japanese team won the Medicine prize for establishing that after heart transplants mice survived an average of 27 days if they listened to Verdi’s opera La Traviata but only 11 days if they listened to the Irish singer Enya. Without any music the mice only survived seven days.

The Peace prize did not go to a scientist but rather the president of Belarus, who made it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

The Italians took out the Physics prize with research finding that it may be possible to walk on water on the moon but not on Mars.

The Chemistry Prize went to scientists from Japan and Germany who discovered the biochemical process that causes onions to make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously thought.

An American and Canadian who parboiled a shrew, swallowed it without chewing and then examined everything excreted during subsequent days - so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system - deservedly took out the Archaeology prize.

Thai researchers won the Public Health prize with work on the surgical management of penile amputations. Sadly, their technique does not work if the penis has been gnawed by a duck.

The published paper for the Safety Engineering prize may date back to 1972 but the electromechanical system to trap airplane hijackers which involves dropping a hijacker through trap doors, sealing him into a package, then dropping 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 is a worthy winner.

The 10 Ig Nobel prizes, organised by the Annals of Improbable Research and awarded at Harvard University, honour scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.