Started up in 1991, the Ignobel Prize was the sarcastic sibling to the Nobel Prize, awarding anti-achievements. For instance, the recipient of an Archaeology prize was a French scout troop whose members diligently removed some graffiti from a cave, which turned out to be 15,000-year-old cave paintings.
Nowadays, the Ignobel prize has a different purpose. At the turn of the century, the Ignobel prize stopped being about ridiculing the unfortunate recipients, and started recognising legitimate research that also happened to be hilarious. These are some of my favourites:
- Wasabi Smoke Alarms. Fire alarms are great if you can hear them, but what about deaf people? Turns out, Wasabi powder is the perfect solution – it disperses through the air quickly, doesn’t catch fire, and is damn good at waking you up from a deep slumber. There’s a fine balance, though, between waking you up and knocking you out, so a chemistry prize was given to scientists who determined the optimal density of this airborne wasabi.
- Frosty footwear. Living in Dunedin, we all know the perils of walking down icy hills in inappropriate shoes. But what exactly is the most appropriate footwear? Our very own Otago physics researchers showed conclusively that wearing socks over your shoes is the way to go if you plan on arriving at Uni in one piece on a chilly morning.
- Farting herrings. During the cold war, at least one Soviet submarine was found straying into Swedish waters. Understandably, the Swedes were less than impressed, and embarked on epic “submarine hunts,” which were continued when submarine sounds were recorded. Except, it probably wasn’t submarines. It was herrings. Apparently, they communicate by farting.
- Moon walking. Jesus could have walked on water – and so can you! Well, as long as you’re on the moon. By artificially reducing the gravity (putting someone in a semi-supportive harness), and giving them flippers, a relatively fit person can actually run on water. But it ain’t graceful. I would recommend finding the video.
- Zombie salmon. It seems that deceased salmon can actually respond to visual stimuli, at least if you do your stats badly. An MRI scan was done of a dead salmon, while it was being shown different pictures. And they got statistically significant results. However, a proportion of all results will be false positives – and if you have a lot of data, there will be a lot of false positives, so you’ve got to correct for that otherwise your results will be bullshit.
- Monkey butts. We recognise faces, chimpanzees recognise butts. Even by looking at a photograph, chimps can pick out their buddies from behind! That would be a strange kind of identity parade ...