The Ig Nobel prizes are a
parody of the official Nobel prizes awarded each year; the Ig Nobel prize is
given out in October of each year. The requirements for obtaining an Ig Nobel
prize include achievements that "first make people laugh, then make them think."
The awards are overseen by the Annals of Improbable Research, a comedic
scientific magazine and are presented to their recipients at Harvard's Sanders
Theater; the ceremony is attended by true Nobel Laureates. All of the Ig Nobel
prizes are for real achievements in the categories for which they are
awarded, and only the name of the award is a parody. Some people may find the Ig
Nobel prize more rewarding than their diplomas. The first year of awards ceremonies was in 1991 which
had the only three "non-true" achievement awards.
Categories include biology, physics, chemistry, medicine and
interdisciplinary studies to name a few. Ten awards are given out each year for
examples in science that are comedic or unexpected; the first year's awards were
for discoveries "that cannot and should not be reproduced." The name Ig Nobel is a combination of the word ignoble which means lowly
or baseness and the name of Alfred Nobel which sheds light onto the purpose of
the award itself. Some of the past winners of the award have touched on subjects
or theories like black holes by their very nature exhibit the characteristics of
Hell or a study on the "five second rule" which is an urban myth that food will not
become contaminated if only left on the floor for five seconds.
The ceremony originally took place in a lecture hall at MIT and are filled
with comedic relief such as a little girl who cries out "I'm bored" if a speaker
takes too long. All of the awards are presented by true Nobel Laureates and each
ceremony ends with the phrase "if you didn't win, or if you did win, better luck
next year..." The ceremony is broadcast on the first Friday following
Thanksgiving on National Public Radio and online live. A British minister asked
the Ig Nobel awards to not give awards to British scientists due to the fact
that it may take away from genuine scientific research. British scientists
rebutted this argument in the publication Chemistry and Industry and support the
Ig
Nobel awards.
Recently, in 2008, Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy
and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, were awarded the Nutrition Ig Nobel prize for modifying, electronically, the
sound a potato chip makes when eaten to fool the consumer into thinking the chip
is crispier than it actually is. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human
Biotechnology received the Ig Nobel Peace
prize for legally stating that plants have dignity. The 2008 Biology Ig Nobel prize was awarded to three scientists for
work on research that determined that fleas that live on a dog jump higher than
fleas that live on a cat. The Physics Ig Nobel prize in 2008 was awarded
to 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 their work in determining that hair, string or almost any other string
like material will knot themselves when left unattended.