Throwback: Happy Thought for 25 September 2020

Have a Happy Thought:

 

You know that time that someone told you an outlandish story, and you kind of believed it but were afraid to actually admit it, in case you were just being gullible?

 

Well, at least you didn't then go and do a scientific study and publish your results, like the winners of this year's ig Nobel award for materials science.

The highlights of their published article are, and I quote:

"• An ethnographic account states an Inuit man made a knife from his own frozen feces.

• We experimentally tested knives manufactured from frozen human feces.

• Knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work."

 

 

Yes that's right folks, for the third year in a row I am pleased to bring you the best of science that makes you laugh, and then makes you think.

This year, some of the prizes got a bit 'real', as evidenced by the references being news articles, not scholarly articles.

But you do have to hand it to the winners of this year's Management Prize - unnamed is the target who I think we can all agree is the real winner here…

 

All of this year's prizes:

ACOUSTICS PRIZE - for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air.

REFERENCE: “A Chinese Alligator in Heliox: Formant Frequencies in a Crocodilian,”

 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE - for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows.

REFERENCE: “Eyebrows Cue Grandiose Narcissism,”

 

PEACE PRIZE - The governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door.

REFERENCE: Numerous news reports.

 

PHYSICS PRIZE - for determining, experimentally, what happens to the shape of a living earthworm when one vibrates the earthworm at high frequency.

REFERENCE: “Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated living earthworms,”

 

ECONOMICS PRIZE - for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries’ national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing.

REFERENCE: “National Income Inequality Predicts Cultural Variation in Mouth to Mouth Kissing,”

 

MANAGEMENT PRIZE - to five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder.

REFERENCE: Numerous news reports and trial documents.

 

ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE -  for collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders, which are not insects.

REFERENCE: “Arachnophobic Entomologists: When Two More Legs Makes a Big Difference,”

 

MEDICINE PRIZE - for diagnosing a long-unrecognized medical condition: Misophonia, the distress at hearing other people make chewing sounds.

REFERENCE: “Misophonia: Diagnostic Criteria for a New Psychiatric Disorder,”

REFERENCE: “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is Effective in Misophonia: An Open Trial,”

 

MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [BRAZIL, UK, INDIA, MEXICO, BELARUS, USA, TURKEY, RUSSIA, TURKMENISTAN]

Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

REFERENCE: Numerous news reports.

NOTE: This is the second Ig Nobel Prize awarded to Alexander Lukashenko. In the year 2013, the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

 

MATERIALS SCIENCE PRIZE - for showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well.

REFERENCE: “Experimental Replication Shows Knives Manufactured from Frozen Human Feces Do Not Work,”

 

And click here for links to details on the above as well as all previous years' prizes:

https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2020