The Nobelity of the Igs
September 23, 2016 4:49 AM   Subscribe

The 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded yesterday.

Here are the winners of the prize, which honors "research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK":


Previously.
posted by metaquarry (34 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
A recording of the ceremony should show up here, although as of the moment, the video is still being processed.
posted by metaquarry at 4:50 AM on September 23, 2016


Physicists must have been distressingly sensible this year if they gave the prize to biologists.
posted by Segundus at 5:13 AM on September 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


The Chemistry entry sticks out like a sore thumb, to me. It feels like a shift from the usual - recognizing someone's dumb but still interesting discovery - to shaming a multi-billion company for their shady practices.

I like Medicine and Psychology best this time around.
posted by bigendian at 5:23 AM on September 23, 2016


Not unprecedented, though — particularly in economics, there are a number of past awards that "honor" individuals and companies that have behaved badly, e.g., Enron in 2002.
posted by metaquarry at 5:32 AM on September 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.
Ahh yes, also known as Trump-isms. Now if we could only get the media to investigate this as thoroughly as Science and Philosophy has.
posted by Fizz at 5:32 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats

LIFE GOALS
posted by Foosnark at 5:34 AM on September 23, 2016 [13 favorites]


I swear on my noodley appendages that I was investigating the Perception prize back in 1992. I called it the 'postcard view'- if you ever want to take in a whole view at once just look upside down between your legs. It's magnificent!

And yes distance perceptions and other things are all wonky.
posted by mrzz at 5:45 AM on September 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Chemistry entry sticks out like a sore thumb, to me. It feels like a shift from the usual - recognizing someone's dumb but still interesting discovery - to shaming a multi-billion company for their shady practices.

Following in the steps of the (UnIg)Nobels of the 2000s, when several (in multiple disciplines) were given at least partially for Not Being / Taking On George W. Bush.
posted by Etrigan at 5:49 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not unprecedented, though — particularly in economics...
Following in the steps of the (UnIg)Nobels of the 2000s...

Did not know this. Thanks!
posted by bigendian at 5:53 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats

did he make tiny rat apparel himself, bought bespoke ones or is there such a thing as off the rack rat clothes

who is the lagerfeld of rat clothes

so many questions
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:54 AM on September 23, 2016 [9 favorites]


I think lagerfeld is the lagerfeld of rat clothes

I mean he strikes me as the sort of person who would be into making super tiny clothes for not humans
posted by Doleful Creature at 5:58 AM on September 23, 2016 [5 favorites]


The medicine prize award with the mirror reminds me of techniques that some amputees will use to help with phantom limb pain.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 6:22 AM on September 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


Medicine: to Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).

Get this info into the hands of people who are wearing casts while broken bones heal and spare them the agony of suffering because they can't scratch that itch under the plaster (or whatever newfangled material doctors use these days to stabilize the limb).
posted by she's not there at 6:29 AM on September 23, 2016 [14 favorites]


Not sure how comfortable rats are with catwalks, but I'm picturing the trendy rat strutting forward and turning to camera to give us BLUE STEEL.
posted by adept256 at 6:40 AM on September 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats
The man pretending to be a goat has been on Metafilter previously.
posted by Stark at 6:54 AM on September 23, 2016


I'm picturing the trendy rat strutting forward and turning to camera to give us BLUE STEEL.

I quite literally spend half my time on metafilter looking for Zoolander quotes to favorite.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:44 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Chemistry entry sticks out like a sore thumb, to me. It feels like a shift from the usual - recognizing someone's dumb but still interesting discovery - to shaming a multi-billion company for their shady practices.

The IgNobels have always been a mix of what I think of "laughing with" (legitimate research on bizarre or funny topics) and "laughing at" (people/companies behaving badly, just plain bad research, etc.) Older IgNobels tended to be more of an even mix of the two. Over time the IgNobels have shifted to strongly favor the "laughing with," but they haven't entirely done away with the "laughing at" prizes.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:45 AM on September 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Chemistry entry sticks out like a sore thumb, to me. It feels like a shift from the usual - recognizing someone's dumb but still interesting discovery - to shaming a multi-billion company for their shady practices.

The first year of the Ig's, maybe the first couple, were all mockery and shaming. Dan Quayle got one for "demonstrating the importance of a science education." Pseudoscientists and cranks got the rest. (See 1991 for example)

I remember laughing at the early press releases but it was a one note joke and of course a bit mean. Shifting to the good natured and usually interesting things they usually do today was quite clever.

On preview: What DevilsAdvocate said, but more so. Way back it wasn't even a mix, just laughing at.
posted by mark k at 7:47 AM on September 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


The chemistry prize has a long precedent with the Ig Nobels, with the second (in 1992) Ig Nobel Prize for Peace being given to:
"Daryl Gates, former Los Angeles police chief, was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for his "uniquely compelling methods of bringing people together."Accepting on his behalf, Stan Goldberg of the Crimson Tech Camera store said, "Daryl Gates has done more for the video camera industry than anyone else."
(If you're confused, 1992 was the year of the Rodney King riots.)
posted by Hactar at 7:47 AM on September 23, 2016




The VW burn was just delicious.

The IgNobles need to walk a pretty fine line in order to avoid making fun of good people trying to do good science (or even mentally ill people who don't understand how science works). This year, at least, I think they did a pretty good job, in that the value of most of the science called out is pretty clear, even if it seems silly on it's face.

So, mostly, the IgNobles go to people who are at least trying to make the world a better place (in tiny, and silly when you phrase it the way the awards do, ways). The occasional callouts of people and organizations that take affirmative steps to make the world a worse place are made all the more sweeter because of the context.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:19 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Reading the article about mirror-scratching made me itch. Really.
posted by ubiquity at 8:33 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.” – Harry Frankfurt

In On Bullshit, the philosopher Frankfurt (2005) defines bullshit as something that is designed to impress but that was constructed absent direct concern for the truth. This distinguishes bullshit from lying, which entails a deliberate manipulation and subversion of truth (as understood by the liar). There is little question that bullshit is a real and consequential phenomenon. Indeed, given the rise of communication technology and the associated increase in the availability of information from a variety of sources, both expert and otherwise, bullshit may be more pervasive than ever before. Despite these seemingly commonplace observations, we know of no psychological research on bullshit. Are people able to detect blatant bullshit? Who is most likely to fall prey to bullshit and why?


ABC

Always
Be
Closing
posted by bukvich at 8:35 AM on September 23, 2016


I remember laughing at the early press releases but it was a one note joke and of course a bit mean. Shifting to the good natured and usually interesting things they usually do today was quite clever.

Indeed; among other things, you're more likely to get the winner to show up to accept a "laughing with" prize than a "laughing at" prize.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:41 AM on September 23, 2016


Perception: to Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.

Cool! The only other place I've heard of this, uh, viewing method is that it gets rid of the Moon Illusion.

If I understand it correctly, this seems to be borne out Higashiyam and Adachi's article:
These results suggested that, in prism-goggle viewing with the head upside down, the mean size judgments decreased more steeply as a function of viewing distance, compared with hollow-goggle viewing with the belly on the ground
But it seems more like it's another illusion counteracting out the Moon Illusion, rather than removing the original Moon Illusion. (Also, the Moon is a little farther away than the other objects they tested.)
posted by BrashTech at 8:52 AM on September 23, 2016


Rat pants! Mouse mittens! Mole moccasins! Vole veils! Chinchilla chaps!
posted by Bob Regular at 9:30 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Get this info into the hands of people who are wearing casts while broken bones heal and spare them the agony of suffering because they can't scratch that itch under the plaster (or whatever newfangled material doctors use these days to stabilize the limb).

I wonder if that would work, since you "know" the itch is under the cast and you're scratching a location in the mirror that's not covered with a cast.
posted by ymgve at 9:45 AM on September 23, 2016


I wonder if that would work, since you "know" the itch is under the cast and you're scratching a location in the mirror that's not covered with a cast.

Probably. As per the paper (linked in the FPP), scratching the opposite limb while using a mirror is also effective at relieving itch in amputees with phantom limb, who clearly "know" they don't even have an itching limb. In that case, of course, the origin of the itching sensation is in the central nervous system, while in the IgNobel-winning study, it was in the peripheral nervous system. (They injected their volunteers' skin with histamine, which sounds so, so unpleasant. Note that for this type of psychophysical study, it's pretty common for the researchers to get preliminary data from themselves.) Since the technique works for both centrally and peripherally originating itch, my guess is that it would work just as well with a cast. If anyone out there has a broken arm or something and wants to try it out, report back!

Writing this comment made me itch like crazy.
posted by biogeo at 10:02 AM on September 23, 2016


metaquarry: "for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.

Oh god, the epistemological problems for this one must be actually interesting to look into. We need someone to publish a paper on this!
posted by andycyca at 12:32 PM on September 23, 2016


Rat pants! Mouse mittens! Mole moccasins! Vole veils! Chinchilla chaps!

Bob Regular, can you put me in touch with your tailor? I need some hamster hats.
posted by yohko at 1:51 PM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Snake suspenders
posted by BlueHorse at 8:27 PM on September 23, 2016


That paper on the itch/scratch perception is incredibly fascinating, and could be significant beyond just the way we perceive our bodies through our own reflections.

How far can we extend this process and still have similar results?

- What happens when it's not a reflection in a mirror, but it's your identical twin (in the classic sense of being so alike that its difficult to tell the difference) that is mirroring your movements?
- What if the person who has an itch either has no arm or the arm is anesthetized (or otherwise restrained), and it's only your twin that moves to scratch that itch?
- Does it have to be a twin? Is there a point where the level of difference is high enough that the itch no longer feels scratched?
- What if it's a highly detailed virtual world, where you look at a virtual version of you in a mirror?
- If you spend enough time in a virtual environment, where the face & body in the simulation is of a different person, would your brain over time adjust to the new, virtual you?
- Would there be any change in how your brain recognizes the 'real' you afterwards?
- How many different 'yous' might you be able handle switching between?
- Is adapting to different 'yous' a skill that can be learned, or are there limitations to how much change the brain is able to handle?


- Or, if we put the ethical and practical issues aside for a moment, and get really weird: If decades or more from now, if it becomes possible to successfully transplant a head to another body, assuming that the process has addressed the basic physiological challenges, might this area of research be quite valuable to the psychological adaptation process?
posted by chambers at 12:27 AM on September 24, 2016


They injected their volunteers' skin with histamine, which sounds so, so unpleasant.

Injection of histamine sounds bad, but it is probably just a tiny pinprick from a common sample from an allergen test kit. Histamine is used as a control to compare the subject's reaction to similarly very tiny pinpricks from other potential allergens, like dander, various types of pollen, etc. The itch dissipates in a few minutes on its own.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:59 AM on September 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Has anyone here read Flugfällan / The Fly Trap? I've heard very good things about it, and it was nominated for the August Prize back in 2004, but haven't gotten around to read it myself.

(interview with the author from 2014)
posted by effbot at 10:19 AM on September 24, 2016


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