Ig Nobel Ceremony Honors Nutty 'Scientific' Research

October 07, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Alvin Powell
Gazette Staff

Scientists explode a barrelful of confetti in one of the many planned 'disruptions' interrupting the wild and crazy Ig Nobel Ceremonies. Photo by Jon Chase
Click here for an Ig Nobel slideshow

The First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last week at Sanders Theatre – the Ninth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, that is.

From the title to the evening- ing adieu by Master of Ceremonies and Ig Nobel driving force Marc Abrahams – If you didn’t win an Ig Nobel Prize tonight – and especially if you did – better luck next year – the whole evening was conducted with tongue firmly in cheek.

The ceremony, which annually honors research that is amazing simply because it was ever conducted, was a cross between a frat party, a scientific lecture, and a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show – without the guy in the leather bustier.

The evening featured four actual Nobel laureates who won their prizes in such hilarious fields as chemistry and physics: Higgins Professor of Physics Sheldon Glashow (Physics ’79), Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry ’86), Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry Emeritus William Lipscomb (Chemistry ’76), and Associate of the Harvard College Observatory Robert Wilson (Physics ’78).

The laureates did their part, handing out Ig Nobels, delivering speeches, and dressing as sheep for their roles in a mini-opera about cloning. Glashow was this year’s prize in the Win a Date with a Nobel Laureate Contest and Lipscomb was the warm-up act, noodling a bit of easy jazz on his clarinet.

The whole event was conducted to a backdrop of cheers and catcalls amid a rain of paper airplanes punctuated by the occasional beach ball that bounced around the audience and onto the stage.

But the stars of the show were the prize winners and their research, which needed no dressing up to generate a laugh. Indeed, part of what makes the research so funny is that it is real. The awards, given in 10 categories, speak for themselves:

• Sociology: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, "for d oing his Ph.D. thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops."

• Physics: Jointly to Len Fisher of Bath, England, and Sydney, Australia, "for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit" and to Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, "for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip."

• Science Education: Jointly to the Kansas Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education "for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton’s theory of gravitation, Faraday’s and Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism and Pasteur’s theory that germs cause disease."

• Literature: The British Standards Institution "for its six-page specification of the proper way to make a cup of tea."

• Medicine: Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, "for carefully collecting, classifying and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples."

• Chemistry: Takeshi Makino, president of the Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, "for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husband’s underwear."

• Biology: Paul Bosland of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University, "for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper."

• Environmental Protection: Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, "for inventing the self-perfuming business suit."

• Peace: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesberg, South Africa, "for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower."

• Managed Health Care: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, Calif., "for inventing a device to aid women in giving birth – the woman i s strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed."

The Ig Nobels, a spoof on the actual Nobel Prizes, which are announced at about this time of year, are produced by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which Abrahams edits, and cosponsored by the Harvard Computer Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association.

The prize ceremony was telecast live over the Internet and taped for broadcast on National Public Radio’s Science Friday on Nov. 26.

The prize ceremony was followed up on Saturday with lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on Monday with a lecture at Harvard Medical School, where winners attempted to explain their research.

Several of the winners did att the ceremony and took their lumps – er, prizes – with good humor. In fact, several lent what may turn out to be important perspectives to members of the audience.

But don’t bet on it.

Reginald Blake, of the British Standards Institute, accepted the Literature Prize for the Institute’s six-page treatise on making tea. Decked out in a hat festooned with tea bags and flags and topped with a teapot, Blake said it was particularly appropriate that the prize be awarded in Boston, site of the Boston Tea Party. After centuries of consideration, Blake said, the British have concluded the Tea Party was really just America’s first attempt at brewing iced tea.

Makino flew in from Japan to accept the Chemistry Prize. Makino told the audience not to worry, his detective agency has no plans to introduce S-Check – a spray that turns color when it contacts seminal fluid, presumably left on underpants after illicit sex – in the United States.

He concluded with a bit of advice.

"Even if it does come to the U.S.," Makino said, "just remember not to wear your underwear."

Solemn advice from the 1999 Ig Nobels.