Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Ig Nobel prizes awarded for bat fellatio, whale snot sampling, more

In the latest iteration of a 20-year-old tradition, researchers gathered to …

Each year, just ahead of when the folks in Sweden announce the Nobel Prizes, Boston plays host to the ceremony at which the Ig Nobel Prizes are handed out. These awards are intended to "make people laugh, and then make them think," and are handed out in a variety of nontraditional categories, presumably because the people involved pick the amusing research first, and then decide on a category to put it in.

The awards ceremony is rather elaborate, featuring a variety of honorary positions, some of them filled by Nobel Prize winners—Roy Glauber (physics, 2005), for example, is the official sweeper, charged with keeping the stage free of paper airplanes. The ceremony also typically features musical performances. This year, it played host to the first performance of The Bacterial Opera. The composers Verdi, Offenbach, and Arther Sullivan are all given posthumous credit for their contributions to the work.

But the focus of the awards is rightly on the research itself, so we'll do the same.

Engineering, for remote sampling of whale snot: One of the nontraditional prizes, this year it goes to three women for putting together a remote-controlled helicopter that could fly up to surfaced whales and collect breath samples. There turned out to be enough mucus in the samples that the researchers could obtain a sampling of the bacterial community living in their respiratory tract, providing a new window into cetacean health. All three traveled to collect their award.

Medicine, for reducing asthma symptoms with a roller coaster: It's not often the phrase "Stress was induced during repeated roller coaster rides" appears anywhere in a scientific paper, much less the abstract. But a pair of Dutch researchers found that the shortness of breath from asthma went down after a ride, during a period in which the participants experienced "positive emotional stress." Both showed up to collect.

Transportation planning, for laying out rail systems using a slime mold: We covered this groundbreaking work when it was first published. If an oat flake is used to represent a destination, the slime mold will consistently lay out an efficient network among these food sources. Three of the team of 10 researchers are repeat Ig Nobel Laureates, having gotten slime molds to do other interesting things in 2008. Most of the team of seven researchers were in Boston to pick up the award.

Physics, for the finding that wearing socks on top of boots improves traction on icy surfaces: It's not often that an award-winning physics paper appears in a medical journal, but the Ig Nobels break from expectations in many ways. The paper itself helpfully includes pictures of the street where the testing was done (complete with parked cars), as well as the experimental setup: a woman wearing a pair of boots with socks on. (It's good to see that the team color-coordinated the socks to match the boots.) The paper's conclusion, in its entirety: "Despite some residual scientific uncertainty, because of the high frequency of ice-related falls in our population, the cheap and simple nature of the socks-over-shoes intervention, and the absence of physical harm (if correctly fitted), we feel inspired to join an eminent professor, herself a long-time proponent of socks, in adopting this practice this winter." One of the authors traveled from New Zealand to attend.

Peace, for the finding that swearing does reduce pain: The study was actually limited to cold-induced pain, generated by having subjects stick their hands in icy water. One group was asked to repeat an unspecified curse; the remainder were given a mundane word to repeat. "Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing," conclude the authors. Not quite sure how that relates to peace, but good to know regardless. The lead author flew in from the UK to pick up his prize.

Public health, for the finding that beards let some microbiologists take dangerous work home with them: During my time in the lab, the general worry was that things falling out of my beard might contaminate a sample. But, for those who work on disease-causing bacteria, the fear is actually reversed: aerosols coming off the bacteria might land dangerous organisms in the beard for transfer outside the lab. The fear is apparently real, as, "beards retained microorganisms and toxin[s] despite washing with soap and water."

Economics, to half of Wall Street, as thanks for our current economy: The official citation is to "The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar," for what they've demonstrated about low-risk, high-yield investments. Oddly, none of them attended.

Chemistry, for showing that oil and water do mix: Three researchers got credit for a 2001 project in which they released a mix of hydrocarbons deep off Norway to simulate a deep-ocean oil leak; BP gets cited for backing up that study with real-world data. Everyone but BP showed up to pick up their prizes.

Management, for showing that promoting people at random is the most efficient method: Again, a somewhat odd combination, where the winner for a business category showed up in a physics journal. The work is based on the Peter Principle, which suggests that people will keep getting promoted until they end up in a position that is beyond their abilities. The work has a pretty big assumption: a hierarchical organization where performance at a higher position doesn't depend on performance in the positions below it. But, given that assumption, agent-based modeling shows that the Peter Principle holds, and the most efficient promotion strategies involve a degree of randomness. All three authors made their way from Italy to Boston to attend.

Biology, for the demonstration that fellatio is a normal part of fruit bat mating: This one made our Weird Science column and, let's face it, showed up just about everywhere else on the Internet. And by "a normal part of mating," we mean that these bats are flexible enough that this occurs while intercourse is in progress. Still, the paper doesn't take all the mystery out of sex. "At present, we do not know why genital licking occurs," the authors admit, "and we present four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that may explain the function of fellatio in C. sphinx." Sadly, although most of the authors are in China, the lone UK participant was the only person who could attend.

With the advent of our weekly Weird Science columns and science blogs, the surprise at some of the bizarre work has lost some of its impact; people are already discussing squirrel masturbation as an odds-on favorite to take home a biology or medicine Ig Nobel next year. What really stands out is the number of researchers who are willing to travel from other continents just to take part in a ceremony that's all about poking fun at their own research. It's a long way from the typical image of stuffy, straight-laced scientists who are obsessed with getting their work taken seriously, and one the public can probably use to see a bit more of.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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