IgNobel Awards 2009

[Jona Lendering]

The 2009 IgNobel Prizes have been awarded. Read it all here. I am particularly impressed by this year's chemistry prize for creating diamonds from liquid (specifically from tequila), although this year's literatury prize is certainly worth checking out.

[Epictetus]

These are hilarious.

But I am curious about this one for serious reasons:

MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.

REFERENCE: "Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?", Donald L. Unger, Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50.

I have the bad habit of cracking my knuckles. I need to try and find that article.

[Matt Lukes]

60 YEARS- holy cow. Um, yeah, those results would be interesting LOL

And diamonds from tequila? Sign me up for testing!

The Giant Panda poo bacteria reducing household garbage by 90% one is a classic too....

[Jona Lendering]

From the Journal of Unproductive and Non-reproducible Knowledge 43 (2009) comes this important article. :wink:

[caiusbeerquitius]

This is so funny!

[Jona Lendering]

This is so funny!

"Journal of Unproductive and Non-reproducible Knowledge" is indeed an excellent title. :lol:

[Matt Lukes]

LMAO- Awesome. Damn that's funny... Funny too how that 'journal' could play host to so much 'fact' around these days

[Jona Lendering]

And this year's winners are...

ENGINEERING PRIZE: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING PRIZE: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK, for using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.

PHYSICS PRIZE: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

PEACE PRIZE: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA, for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.

ECONOMICS PRIZE: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, and BP [British Petroleum], for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix.

MANAGEMENT PRIZE: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol, UK, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.

[Epictetus]

PEACE PRIZE: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.

I think Mythbusters had an episode on this one. They confirmed it too, if I remember correctly.

[D B Campbell]

PHYSICS PRIZE: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

"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.

Novel?! My grandmother used to do that.

[Jona Lendering]

MANAGEMENT PRIZE: ... organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.

I somehow suspected this.

[Dithrambus]

PEACE PRIZE: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.

Hm, I have tried this many times and I am sure that it does not work.

[john m roberts]

Fruit bats. Heh, heh.