2008 Ig Nobel prizes
The 2008 Ig Nobel prizes are out! I have experimental proof of the physics prize with my iPod headphone cable. There's a summary in the BBC News, and here are the winners:
Nutrition
Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
Reference: "The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips," Journal of Sensory Studies, vol. 19, October 2004, pp. 347-63.
Peace
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
Reference: "The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake"
Archaeology
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
Reference: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.
Biology
Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
Reference: "A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)," Veterinary Parasitology, vol. 92, no. 3, October 1, 2000, pp. 239-41.
Medicine
Dan Ariely of Duke University, USA, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.
Reference: "Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy," Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.
Cognitive Science
Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
Reference: "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.
Economics
Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
Reference: "Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81.
Physics
Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
Reference: "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 42, October 16, 2007, pp. 16432-7.
Chemistry
Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.
Reference: "Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility," New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351.
Reference: "The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola," Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6. [NOTE: THE JOURNAL LATER CHANGED ITS NAME. NOW CALLED "Human & experimental toxicology"]
Literature
David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK, for his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."
Reference: "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations," Organization Studies, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1625-40.