By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

This week's awarding of the Nobel Prizes turned out to be an anticlimax to the annual presentation of the 1996 Ig Nobel Prizes at Sanders Theatre last Thursday. Unlike the Nobels, with all their ostentatious gold, cash, and pomp, the Ig Nobels won stuff like Pepto-Bismol, toenail clippers, a cheap coffee mug, and some other junk.

In a salute to the environmental movement, they had a choice of getting the awards in a paper or plastic bag.

The Ig Nobel in Public Health was bestowed on Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland, and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway, for a medical investigation of the "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll." Lest you think I'm kidding, the study was published in Genitourinary Medicine, Vol. 69, No. 4, August 1993, p. 322. Check it out.

Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies, pointed out that: "When you date an inflatable doll, remember you're dating everyone else who dated that doll."

The Ig Nobel in Biology went to a pungent report, "The Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches," by Anders Baerheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway. The winners could not, or would not, show up. However, some guy claiming to be a Norwegian diplomat tossed leeches into a screeching audience. He claimed they had not been fed recently. Abrahams announced that the leeches were provided by "Harvard Food Services."

The Ig Nobel in Physics was won by Robert Matthews of Ashton University, England, for demonstrating a consequence of Murphy's Law -- the fact that dropped toast always lands on the buttered side. This report, complete with mathematical equations, was also published in some obscure scientific journal.

The literature prize was awarded, but unaccepted, by a jargon-soaked journal called Social Text. The citation read, "For eagerly publishing research that they could not understand, that the author said was meaningless, and which claimed that reality did not exist." The report, written by physicist Alan Sokal, who likes to play jokes on social scientists, was titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity."

Jacques Chirac, president of France, captured the Peace Ig Nobel for commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic test blasts in the south Pacific Ocean.

A pack of tobacco company executives won the Ig Nobel in Medicine for their unshakable discovery, as revealed in sworn testimony to the U.S. Congress, that nicotine was not addictive. No one showed up to accept the award.

The audience viewed a videotape of the event that won George Goble of Purdue University the Chemistry prize. He established a world record time for igniting a barbecue grill -- a blistering three seconds. Along with charcoal, George used liquid oxygen, a fuel that can launch a rocket into orbit. Unfortunately, the combination cooked the grill along with the burgers.

"It's a record for fast food," said a man who accepted the award for Goble.

The Ig Nobel in Economics was cornered by Robert Genco of the University of Buffalo for his discovery that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive gum disease."

Last, but certainly not least, was Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Mass., recognized for inflicting upon the world pink lawn flamingos. Don wore a bright pink jacket for the occasion and wondered philosophically what archaeologists of the future will think when they dig up thousands, maybe millions, of these nonbiodegradable things in what was once suburbia. They might conclude that they were religious icons.

Biodiversity Opera

The sixth annual Ig Nobel ceremony, was proudly (ha!) sponsored by The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), the journal of record for inflated research -- and inflated personalities. Other cosponsors included the Harvard Computer Society; Tangents, the Harvard-Radcliffe Mathematical Bulletin; and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association.

The theme this year was biodiversity, nicely illustrated by Featherstone's tacky flamingos, which littered the stage. In addition, there were plastic penguins and barnyard animals, a phony snake, and two ladies dressed as cockroaches. The latter were prima donnas in a mini-opera titled "Lament Del Cockroaches."

Others in the live cast included three people dressed as plants of unknown genera and two (real) Nobelists playing insects of unidentifiable species. During the last act, a meteorite (a big chunk of aluminum foil) zoomed down from Mars (the balcony) and, amid screams of terror, extincted the cockroaches.

The audience cheered.

One of the two actual Nobelists was William Lipscomb (Chemistry '76), who, in addition to playing an insect, played the jazz clarinet in the pre-ceremony concert. The other Laureate was Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry '86), who was auctioned off as a door prize and who played a "cymbalic duet" with Deborah Henson-Conant. The concert was a short one, and only one clang was scripted. However, the audience screamed for an encore, so a second clang was banged.

Deborah, who also played the jazz harp, wore a wig of a purple hue that had been banned by the Cambridge Historical Society. (The color, not the wig.)

Thrown indiscriminately into the ceremony were several tributes to biodiversity. Kate Eppers of the Committee for Bacterial Rights urged people to cease the ethnic cleansing of these marvelous creatures by saying "no" to hand washing.

A short lecture on the value of bugs was presented by Robert Lopez, who won a 1994 Ig Nobel for removing ear mites from cats and putting them into his own ears, just to see what would happen.

Lopez passed out cookies with bugs (dead) baked into them. They were black and crunchy but no one could identify the species. The audience was assured that the cookies were prepared by "Harvard Food Services."

Equally moving tributes included one by 1995 Ig Nobelist John Martinez, developer of coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak, a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia.

Jim Knowlton (Art '92) boasted about his classic anatomy poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom." It was noted that he had been encouraged by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.

Ig Nobel festivities traditionally include the Heisenberg Certainty Lectures. These 30-second lectures are named in honor of physicist Werner Heisenberg's infamous "uncertainty principle," which states that it is impossible to accurately measure both the position and momentum of an elementary particle at the same instant.

Lipscomb's lecture was dedicated to politicians. "If your position is everywhere," he warned, "your momentum is zero."

Robert T. Morris, lauded as the only (known) convicted felon in the audience, discussed computer security. Roberts was arrested some years back for breaking into secret federal computer files. He announced that he had developed a way to securely encode and decode all e-mail and Internet traffic. But just as he was about to reveal it, his 30 seconds ran out.

Abrahams, who is editor of AIR, closed the celebration with these words: "If you didn't win an Ig Nobel Prize -- or you did -- better luck next time."