The IgNobels, Or, Whatever Will They Come Up With Next?

Since Ger complained I wasn't blogging properly...

The Ig Nobel awards are a parody of the Nobel prizes, awarded each year in October for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think", as everybody knows already.

This year's prizes made me snort my tea through my nose. Excerpts are from Nature 449, 648 (2007)

Make Love, Not War (literally)

"...[R]esearchers at the US Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio proposed to develop chemical aphrodisiacs that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The idea — dubbed the 'gay bomb' — earned the unnamed Ohio scientists the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize[.].."

I have unwholesome mental images of the resulting... scuffle.

"The competition for the Peace Prize was intense even within Wright-Patterson laboratory itself. Researchers there also proposed chemicals designed to attract stinging and biting creatures, as well as low-toxicity compounds that would “create severe and lasting halitosis” for those exposed to tiny concentrations. "

Severe and lasting halitosis. Are you sure that doesn't give enemy troops an advantage?

A Little Hard To Swallow

'Brian Witcombe of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, shared the Medicine Prize with Dan Meyer of Sword Swallowers' Association International in Antioch, Tennessee, for their report, “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects”.'

Right.

You've Always Wanted To Know This

"The Linguistics Prize, for example, went to researchers from the University of Barcelona in Spain for showing that rats cannot always distinguish between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards."

This is such a useful discovery, no?

Further Uses of the Little Blue Pill

'Investigators at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina won the Aviation Prize for determining that Viagra aids hamsters' recovery from jet lag. A member of that team, Diego Golombek, praised his graduate students for top-flight research and “for going to the drugstore to get the Viagra”.'

I somehow don't quite see little old ladies popping blue pills after a 14-hr flight.