The Ig's

[Gob]

The full list of Ig Nobel winners:

Physiology Prize: Anna Wilkinson, from the University of Lincoln, and colleagues for their study in the journal Current Zoology titled "No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise".

Chemistry Prize: A team led from Shiga University, Japan, that determined the ideal density of airborne wasabi to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm. Patent pending.

Medicine Prize: Shared by two teams whose independent research jointly established that people make better decisions about some kinds of things, but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

Psychology Prize: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, Norway, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

Literature Prize: John Perry of Stanford University, US, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.

Biology Prize: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle. The pair have published two papers on the topic.

Physics Prize: Philippe Perrin and colleagues for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.

Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank.

Public Safety Prize: John Senders of the University of Toronto, Canada, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

Mathematics Prize: Shared by a group of doom-mongers for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations -

Dorothy Martin of the US who predicted the world would end in 1954
Pat Robertson of the US who predicted the world would end in 1982
Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the US who predicted the world would end in 1990
Lee Jang Rim of Korea who predicted the world would end in 1992
Credonia Mwerinde of Uganda who predicted the world would end in 1999
Harold Camping of the US who predicted the world would end in 1994 and then later in 2011



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15117051

[Scooter]

It's always easy to poke fun at this sort of stuff when described out of the context of the purpose of the research, but some of these have fairly readily identifiable applications. For example:

Medicine Prize: Shared by two teams whose independent research jointly established that people make better decisions about some kinds of things, but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

If someone is employed in a critical position (surgeons, law enforcement, military, etc.) where they are unable to take breaks to urinate, I would want to know what sort of impact it is having on their decision making.

Psychology Prize: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, Norway, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

Various psychological issues manifest in physical symptoms. Is excessive sighing associated with a particular psychological problem that led them to study the relationship?

Physics Prize: Philippe Perrin and colleagues for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.

I'm sure that atletes who perform in these sports would want to know this in order to improve their performance.

Public Safety Prize: John Senders of the University of Toronto, Canada, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

If the range of motion of a visor is such that it obstructs the driver's vision, then that has implications for safe vehicle design.

I confess, though, that some of the others had me shaking my head.