ESL Blogs

I just read a hilarious article in BBC about Ig Nobel Prize 2014 that made me smile at the ridiculous things that we human do in the name of research. What is Ig Nobel Prize? According to its website www.improbable.com, the Ig Nobel Prize honour achievement that first make people laugh and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.

In other words, Ig Nobel Prize is the parody of Nobel Prize.

Here are the list of Ig Nobel Prize winners for 2014.

 1.         PHYSICS: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, of Kitasato University, Japan, and colleagues, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. 

2.         NEUROSCIENCE: Kang Lee, of the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

3.         PSYCHOLOGY: Peter Jonason, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and colleagues for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

4.         PUBLIC HEALTH: Jaroslav Flegr, of Charles University, Czech Republic, and colleagues for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.

5.         BIOLOGY: Vlastimil Hart, of the Czech University of Life Sciences, and colleagues for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.

6.         ART: Marina de Tommaso, of the University of Bari, Italy, and colleagues for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.

7.         ECONOMICS: The Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

8.         MEDICINE: Ian Humphreys, of Michigan State University, US, and colleagues, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.

9.         ARCTIC SCIENCE: Eigil Reimers, of the University of Oslo, Norway, and colleagues, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.

10.     NUTRITION: Raquel Rubio, of IRTA, Spain, and colleagues, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."

Among those winners, I was struck with something akin of wonder and amazement, with the research in the field of Phycology and Public Health by Peter Jonason, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia and  Jaroslav Flegr, of Charles University, Czech Republic respectively. Am I a psychopath with mental issues since I often stayed up late and love cats?  LOL.

I hope you enjoy reading the article as well as reading the list of winners. Which research do you like the best? :D :D

Source : BBC and Improbable Research