1996-10-04
From the mini Annals of Impropable Research
If you were not one of the fortunate (?) 1200 organisms who crawled, or wiggled, or walked, or flew into the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony on Oct. 3 at Harvard's Sanders Theater, take heart. Special edited versions will be broadcast on:
A full report on the event will be published in the Jan/Feb 1997 issue of The Annals of Improbable Research. And yes, videotapes of the event will (most likely) be available fairly soon.
Here are the winners of the 1996 Ig Nobel Prizes, presented at the Sixth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, held at Sanders Theater, Harvard University on Thursday evening, October 3, 1996. The Prizes were handed out by genuine Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, William Lipscomb, and others.
The Prizes honor people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."
The event was reluctantly presented by The Annals of Improbable Research (which has been described as "the MAD Magazine of science"). This year it was also co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, Tangents (the Harvard Radcliffe mathematical bulletin), and the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association.
This year's ceremony was embroiled in controversy -- Sir Robert May, the science advisor to the British government, had asked the organizers to stop giving Ig Nobel Prizes to scientists, even when the scientists want to receive them. Nevertheless, this year's Ig Nobel roster included yet another prizewinner from England.
Anders Baerheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway, for their tasty and tasteful report, "Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches." [The report was published in British Medical Journal, vol. 309, Dec 24-31, 1994, p. 1689.] Drs. Baerheim and Sandvik sent a videotaped acceptance speech, and watched the ceremony live on the Internet.
James Johnston of R.J. Reynolds, Joseph Taddeo of U.S. Tobaccco, Andrew Tisch of Lorillard, William Campbell of Philip Morris, and the late Thomas E. Sandefur, Jr., chairman of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. for their unshakable discovery, as testified before the US Congress, that nicotine is not addictive.
Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, for his studies of Murphy's Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast always falls on the buttered side. [The report, "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants" was published in European Journal of Physics, vol.16, no.4, July 18, 1995, p. 172-6.] Professor Matthews sent an audiotaped acceptance speech.
Jacques Chirac, President of France, for commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific.
Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway, for their cautionary medical report "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll." [The report was published in Genitourinary Medicine, vol. 69, no. 4, Aug. 1993, p. 322.] Dr. Moi traveled from Oslo to Cambridge -- at his own expense -- to accept the Prize. During the trip, Dr. Moi also delivered a lecture at Harvard Medical School about his achievement.
George Goble of Purdue University, for his blistering, world record time for igniting a barbeque grill -- three seconds, using charcoal and liquid oxygen. Professor Goble's colleague Joe Cychosz traveled to Cambridge to accept the Prize.
Chonosuke Okamura of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan, for discovering the fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons, princesses, and more than 1000 other extinct "mini-species," each of which is less than 1/100 of an inch in length. [For details see the series Reports of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory, published by the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan during the 1970s and 1980s.]
The editors of the journal Social Text, for eagerly publishing research that they could not understand, that the author said was meaningless, and which claimed that reality does not exist. [The paper was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Alan Sokal, Social Text, Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 217-252.]
Dr. Robert J. Genco of the University of Buffalo for his discovery that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease."
Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for his ornamentally evolutionary invention, the plastic pink flamingo. Mr. Featherstone traveled to Cambridge to accept the Prize. The ceremony also included an auction of plaster casts of the left feet of four Nobel Laureates, and several tributes to the concept of "Biodiversity."
Thirteen-year old Kate Eppers, spokesperson for the Committee for Bacterial Rights, said: "We live in a diverse society. Our biggest ethnic groups are not the Asians, the Africans or the Caucasians. Our biggest ethnic groups are the Bacteria. I used to wash my hands every day. My mom made me. But then I learned about ethnic cleansing. Every time you wash your hands, you wipe out billions and billions of Bacteria. That's not fair. Bacteria have rights, too. So let's be grown-ups about this. When mom asks you to wash your hands, just say No."
Further details -- including shocking photos -- will be posted in our web site during the coming months.
A recent survey by the U.S. National Science Foundation found that 52% of the respondents believe that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
Once again it is time to vote on "scientifical correctness" and help the scientific community decide which side of various issues it should accept as "correct".
Please check only one (if at all possible, check more if you must):
___ Dinosaurs and man walked together millions of years ago. (13%)
___ Dinosaurs and man walked together less than 10,000 years ago. (06%)
___ Dinosaurs and man walked together, but it was purely platonic. (06%)
___ Dinosaurs became extinct before the first humans existed. (61%)
___ Humans became extinct before the first dinosaurs existed. (14%)
Somewhere between 100 and 26,000 readers voted on a question of "scientifical correctness." (Two percent of the answers were sent in languages that none of our panel could translate.) The results should help the scientific community decide which side of this issue it should accept as "correct".
More details next time, perhaps. And yes, we intend to conduct surveys on all the major controversial scientific questions of our era.
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