Research Drunken worms and plastic plants: Ig Nobel Prizes awarded
Drunken worms, real plants imitating plastic plants and the swimming abilities of a dead trout: ten scientific studies have been awarded the "Ig Nobel Prizes" in the USA. One of the prizewinners is Swiss.
The non-endowed fun prizes, awarded for the 34th time by a journal for curious research, are intended to "celebrate the unusual and honor the imaginative", according to the organizers. "Ignoble" means "dishonorable" in German. The gala was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge on the US East Coast.
This year's prizewinners include Aaron Lob from the University of Zurich. He was involved in a study led by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers from the Netherlands, which demonstrated that when a coin is tossed, the coin tends to land on the same side it was on before the toss. The researchers carried out a total of 350,757 experiments for this demonstration. The coin tossing experiments lasted a total of 81 days, as the researchers involved said at the award ceremony. The work won the prize in the probability category.
Pigeons in rockets
US psychologist B.F. Skinner, who died in 1990, was posthumously awarded the prize in the Peace category for experiments on whether it would be possible to place live pigeons in rockets to guide the rockets' trajectory. "I would like to thank you for finally recognizing his most important contribution," said the scientist's daughter, Julie Skinner Vargas, who accepted the award on behalf of her father.
US scientist James Liao received the prize in the physics category for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout. "I discovered that a live fish moves more than a dead fish - but not much more. The water floats the fish," said Liao.
Animals breathing from the anus
Researchers from Japan and the USA were honored in the physiology category for the discovery that many mammals are able to breathe through their anus.
Scientists from France and Chile were honored in the anatomy category for their research into whether the hair vertebrae of most people in the northern hemisphere rotate in the same direction as those of most people in the southern hemisphere.
US scientist Jacob White and his Brazilian colleague Felipe Yamashita were awarded in the botany category for discovering evidence that some real plants mimic the shapes of neighboring plastic plants.
Drunken worms
In the Medicine category, scientists Christian Büchel, Tahmine Fadai and Lieven Schenk from the University of Hamburg received the award for demonstrating that fake medicine with painful side effects can be more effective than fake medicine without painful side effects.
British scientist Saul Justin Newman was recognized in the Demography category for his discovery that many people who were famous for having lived exceptionally long lives lived in places where births and deaths are very poorly documented.
US scientists Fordyce Ely and William Petersen were posthumously honored in the biology category for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on its back in the 1940s to find out how and when cows squirt out their milk.
Researchers from the Netherlands and France were honored in the chemistry category for using chromatography - a process for separating a mixture of substances - to separate drunk and sober worms.
SDA
