Michael Rosenthal

(8/2021) We are all familiar with the Nobel Prizes, named for Alfred Nobel, that chronicle achievements in many fields of research that has strong impacts on life. In 1991 the Ig Nobel Prizes were established – a good natured parody of the Nobel Prize that honors "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The awards ceremony usually features mini-operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds, and the second in seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. As the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it is devoid of scientific merit. Traditionally, the winners also give public talks in Boston the day after the awards ceremony; alas. This year the talks were done as webcasts.

The winners receive, in addition to eternal Ig Nobel fame, a 10 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe! Zimbabwe stopped using its native currency in 2009 because if skyrocketing inflation and hyperinflation. At its nadir, the 100-trillion dollar bill was roughly the equivalent of 40 US cents.

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize went to the governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door.

The Ig Nobel Prize in Economics went to a group of 9 people (names are available from me or online upon request) for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries’ national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to mouth kissing. The honorees recruited 3,109 participants from around the world, spanning 13 countries on six continents, for an online study. They found that kissing was typically rated as more important in later phases of a romantic relationship. They found that income inequality was positively related to kissing frequency. The authors concluded that "Individuals kiss their partner more in countries where resource competition is likely to be more intense.

The Ig Nobel Prize in Physics went to Ivan Maksymov and Andriy Pototsky for determining, experimentally, what happens to the shape of a living earthworm when one vibrates the earthworm at high frequency. The scientists reasoned that since many living organisms are mostly made of liquid, which they deem akin to liquid drops, organisms should experience standing waves under the right conditions. Earthworms were chosen because "they have a hydrostatic skeleton with a flexible skin and a liquid-filled body cavity." As obscure as this may sound (At least to me!) the authors contended that their results "could be used to develop new techniques for probing and controlling the biophysical processes like the propagation of nerve processes inside a living body.

The Ig Nobel Prize in Entomology went to Richard Vetter, "for collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders, which are not insects." He found that the prevalence of arachnophobia among entomologists surprising, given that they work so closely with creatures many non-entomologists find equally repulsive, and he wanted to learn more about what might be causing the aversion. One person in the study "had a recurring nightmare (from age 4 to age 8) of running around her house into the large web of a human-sized spider and waking up just before being eaten."

The Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Nienke Vulink, Damiaan Denys, and Arnoud van Loon for diagnosing a long-unrecognized medical condition: Misophonia, the distress at hearing other people make chewing sounds. Three patients were referred to the honorees’ center for studying obsessive-compulsive disorders in Amsterdam after reporting extreme distress and aggressive outbursts at the sound of someone else smacking their lips or breathing. The condition didn’t fit any existing diagnostic disorder, but when the story spread through a Dutch Internet forum, close to 50 people suffering the described symptoms contacted center. Forty-two patients in all were assessed. It was found that triggering sounds were all human-produced – sounds from animals, or from the patients themselves did not induce the same distress. Eighty-one percent of the patients reported lip-smacking and other sounds associated with eating as a trigger. About 64 percent found loud breathing or "nose sounds" distressing. Fifty-nine percent of the patients couldn’t bear the sound of typing on a keyboard or the repeated clicking of a pen. Many of the patients responded aggressively to these triggers, and often were ashamed about their excessive reaction. The authors identify this phenomenon as a new psychiatric disorder, naming it misophonia.

Here is a good one, the Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education, which the reader will find highly relevant. Recipients are a group of 9 world leaders (including Donald Trump) for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death that scientists and doctors can." The idea behind this award is to stimulate useful discussion on a topic by the use of factual vagueness. All of the world leaders in the ward are said to have ignored scientific expertise, instituting disastrous policies for dealing with a global pandemic. The hope of the prize is that such activity will stimulate people with thinking more clearly by listening to scientists more carefully and politicians less so in future.

The Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology went to Miranda Giacomin and Nicholas Rule, for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows. Psychologists often believe that grandiose narcissism is a bad personality trait, marked by selfishness, egotism, entitlement, and vanity. Although such individuals, they point out, are often superficially charming, it is good to be able to spot a narcissist at first glance. The winning scientists recruited 39 undergraduates to pose for photographs with neutral expressions and had them fill out the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. They then used these photographs for a series of studies in which participants were asked to rate each of the faces in terms of how narcissistic they thought they were. Eyebrows are among the most expressive features of the face, and the researchers found that people rely on eyebrows to accurately pick out the grandiose narcissists. The conclusion here is to beware of people with distinctive, well-groomed eyebrows. (841 words)

There are a few more Ig Nobel Prizes, but I find them too unpleasant to write about. They can be found on an Internet search.

The cicadas are gone. I was disappointed with my cicada experience, the sum total of which was some cicada sounds in the woods next to my house and dead cicadas on the sidewalk. This was nothing like my experience on the Bard College campus in the Hudson Valley some years ago. A recent New York Times article cited how a handful of chefs were cooking with cicadas. If any of you out there ate cicadas and you contact me, I will forward your experience (and maybe a recipe!) in my next Real Science article.

Read other articles by Michael Rosenthal