A good think of Autumn is that the IgNobel prizes to eccentric yet mostly useful research are awarded.
This year's winners are:
Chemistry: water and oil do mix... if BP is involved
Eric Adams, Scott Socolofsky, Stephen Masutani and BP (USA) for dispelling the old myth that water and oil cannot mix.
BP did not send anyone to the ceremony but nobody minded because it's already evident that they lack of any sense of humor... in fact they lack of any human emotion other than greed.
The research is titled Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator's Committee (link) and can be experimentally confirmed by any naive swimmer almost anywhere in the coast of the Gulf of Mexico between Louisiana and Florida.
Is it water, is it oil...? No, it is corexit and you are dead!
Physics: an extra pair of socks helps in winter... but for another reason to the one you are thinking.
Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest (NZ) scientifically confirmed what every other archetypal nerd knows: that wearing socks outside your shoes prevents slipping on icy ground.
My more elegant alternative is to have good non-slip shoes, if you buy them at a construction warehouse and wear them with a suit of the wrong size they look equally nerdy, believe me.
Preventing Winter Falls: A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Novel Intervention, Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest, New Zealand Medical Journal. vol. 122, no, 1298, July 3, 2009, pp. 31-8.
BP did not send anyone to the ceremony but nobody minded because it's already evident that they lack of any sense of humor... in fact they lack of any human emotion other than greed.
The research is titled Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator's Committee (link) and can be experimentally confirmed by any naive swimmer almost anywhere in the coast of the Gulf of Mexico between Louisiana and Florida.
Is it water, is it oil...? No, it is corexit and you are dead!
Physics: an extra pair of socks helps in winter... but for another reason to the one you are thinking.
Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest (NZ) scientifically confirmed what every other archetypal nerd knows: that wearing socks outside your shoes prevents slipping on icy ground.
My more elegant alternative is to have good non-slip shoes, if you buy them at a construction warehouse and wear them with a suit of the wrong size they look equally nerdy, believe me.
Preventing Winter Falls: A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Novel Intervention, Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest, New Zealand Medical Journal. vol. 122, no, 1298, July 3, 2009, pp. 31-8.
Medicine prize: asthma not anymore a excuse for fun and risk sports.
Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest (Netherlands) devised a new method to treat asthma by sitting patients on a rollercoaster. Problem is if they also suffer from heart condition or panic to heights.
Rollercoaster Asthma: When Positive Emotional Stress Interferes with Dyspnea Perception Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest, Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol. 45, 2006, pp. 977–87.
Transportation Planning: mold thinks better than engineers.
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki and Ryo Kobayashi (Japan) for using slime mold to plan optimal transport routes. In 2008 they won the biology prize for showing that mold also solves puzzles better than you can.
Who needs a brain anymore?
Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Dan P. Bebber, Mark D. Fricker, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Science, Vol. 327. no. 5964, January 22, 2010, pp. 439-42.
Management: Chaos is best, merits are useless.
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo demonstrated that randomizing promotions leads to optimal management efficiency.
Chaos is Order, Order is Chaos!
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study, Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72. (link)
Public health: good ol' Peter the Great was right on his hatred of beards: researchers need to shave more.
Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor (USA) confirmed another widely held suspicion: microbes love bearded scientists... specially their facial hair.
It is feared that fundamentalist Jewish and Muslim scientists may be fired en masse after this revolutionary discovery.
Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men," Manuel S. Barbeito, Charles T. Mathews, and Larry A. Taylor, Applied Microbiology, vol. 15, no. 4, July 1967, pp. 899–906. (link)
Biology: the universality of fellatio. Bats also do it and makes them better lovers.
Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, Shuyi Zhang (China) and Gareth Jones (UK) for researching fellatio among fruit bats.
Nothing like a kiss down there when little Johnny feels down. Who needs viagra?!
Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time Min Tan, Gareth Jones, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, Shuyi Zhang and Libiao Zhang, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, no. 10, e7595.
Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest (Netherlands) devised a new method to treat asthma by sitting patients on a rollercoaster. Problem is if they also suffer from heart condition or panic to heights.
Rollercoaster Asthma: When Positive Emotional Stress Interferes with Dyspnea Perception Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest, Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol. 45, 2006, pp. 977–87.
Transportation Planning: mold thinks better than engineers.
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki and Ryo Kobayashi (Japan) for using slime mold to plan optimal transport routes. In 2008 they won the biology prize for showing that mold also solves puzzles better than you can.
Who needs a brain anymore?
Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Dan P. Bebber, Mark D. Fricker, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Science, Vol. 327. no. 5964, January 22, 2010, pp. 439-42.
Management: Chaos is best, merits are useless.
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo demonstrated that randomizing promotions leads to optimal management efficiency.
Chaos is Order, Order is Chaos!
The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study, Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72. (link)
Public health: good ol' Peter the Great was right on his hatred of beards: researchers need to shave more.
Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor (USA) confirmed another widely held suspicion: microbes love bearded scientists... specially their facial hair.
It is feared that fundamentalist Jewish and Muslim scientists may be fired en masse after this revolutionary discovery.
Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men," Manuel S. Barbeito, Charles T. Mathews, and Larry A. Taylor, Applied Microbiology, vol. 15, no. 4, July 1967, pp. 899–906. (link)
Biology: the universality of fellatio. Bats also do it and makes them better lovers.
Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, Shuyi Zhang (China) and Gareth Jones (UK) for researching fellatio among fruit bats.
Nothing like a kiss down there when little Johnny feels down. Who needs viagra?!
Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time Min Tan, Gareth Jones, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, Shuyi Zhang and Libiao Zhang, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, no. 10, e7595.
Peace: #@%&#&!!!
Richard Stephens, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston (UK) for confirming another popular belief: swearing loud actually relieves pain.
Touching the affected part also helps, but that's another research.
Swearing as a Response to Pain Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston, Neuroreport, vol. 20 , no. 12, 2009, pp. 1056-60.
Engineering: black helicopters hovering on your breath.
Well, not black and not you... unless you are a whale.
Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin (UK) and Diane Gendron (USA) found use for a remote control helicopter to gather whales' breath and find out more about what microbes they may host.
A Novel Non-Invasive Tool for Disease Surveillance of Free-Ranging Whales and Its Relevance to Conservation Programs, Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron, Animal Conservation, vol. 13, no. 2, April 2010, pp. 217-25.
Economics: get the money and run. Or better: get bailed out on public money.
Collectively awarded to the boards and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Magnetar, for inventing out of the blue new ways to invest money, maximizing financial gain and minimizing risks... for some.
None of them attended the ceremony.
Honestly, this prize comes two or three years too late. The 2010 prize should have been awarded, in my opinion, to the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission for experimentally demonstrating that budget cuts do not help the economy the least.
Sadly the lab rat in such experiment happens to be you.
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