贵贰贰顿叠础颁碍鈥橲 favourite awards, the Ig Nobel prizes, were handed out at a
ceremony at Harvard University鈥檚 hallowed Sanders Theater last week. Sponsored
by the Annals of Improbable Research, they honour achievements that
cannot or should not be reproduced.
Feedback particularly likes them because the achievements they represent tend
to be so much easier to understand than those recognised by the real Nobel
prizes. We are also pleased to report that many of them have already been
honoured by an appearance in the pages of New Scientist.
The Ig Nobel for biology went to Pek van Andel, a physiologist at the
University of Groningen, the Netherlands, for his paper in the 18 December issue
of the British Medical Journal titled 鈥淢agnetic resonance imaging of
male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal鈥�. This is one
of the achievements Feedback definitely understands, though we do think the real
prizewinners should have been the eight couples of 鈥渟mall to average鈥� stature
who squeezed themselves into the MRI machine.
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Another romantic prize was that for chemistry, which was awarded to Donatella
Marazziti of the University of Pisa in Italy and three colleagues. Their paper
in Psychological Medicine (vol 29, p 741) reports that, biochemically
speaking, romantic love can鈥檛 be distinguished from severe obsessive-compulsive
disorder. Of course, this news will hardly be surprising to experienced victims,
but it is unlikely to divert them from the pursuit of romance in favour of
washing their hands 200 times a day.
Some more unusual biochemistry earned a person called
Jasmuheen鈥攆ormerly Ellen Greve of Brisbane鈥攖he Ig Nobel in
literature for her book Living on Light. The book explains that people
don鈥檛 really need to eat, and lists famous people who didn鈥檛 eat鈥攁lthough
the famous people listed on her website (www.selfempowermentacademy.com.au/light.htm)
aren鈥檛 any that Feedback has ever heard of. Perhaps they鈥檙e famous on an astral plane
which Feedback is too full of fish and chips to reach.
More familiar ground is provided by the psychology prize, which went to David
Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kreuger of the University of Illinois.
The title of their paper in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology (vol 77, p 1121) sums it all up: 鈥淯nskilled and unaware of it:
how difficulties in recognizing one鈥檚 own incompetence lead to inflated
蝉别濒蹿-补蝉蝉别蝉蝉尘别苍迟蝉.鈥�
True indeed, but isn鈥檛 it strange that difficulties in recognising one鈥檚 own
incompetence often also lead to senior posts in management?
The Ig Nobels rightly recognise worthy inventions, and this year none is more
worthy than the computer program called 鈥淧awSense鈥�, written by Chris Niswander
of Tucson, Arizona, to detect when a cat is walking across the keyboard of your
computer. The program loads when you boot up the computer and watches for the
key sequences that mark the typing style of a strolling feline. As soon as it
spots what seems to be a peripatetic cat, it blocks further keystrokes, throws
up a warning screen and starts making a noise that cats don鈥檛 like.
Among the many other prizes, two deserve brief mention. The British Royal
Navy earned the peace prize for ordering sailors to shout 鈥淏ang!鈥� instead of
shooting live cannon shells鈥攖hough unfortunately the citation does not say
in what circumstances this order was issued. And the health prize went to
Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton and William Tullet for their alarming report
鈥淭he collapse of toilets in Glasgow鈥�, published in the Scottish Medical
Journal (vol 38, p 185).
For a full report and a list of all the prizewinners, go to
www.improbable.com
MEANWHILE, Australians have been gripped in recent months by a scientific
research project that one day may well qualify for an Ig Nobel. Inspired by
preliminary research by physicist Karl Kuszelnicki of the University of Sydney,
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation鈥檚 science website 鈥淭he Lab鈥� has been
conducting a nationwide survey into the characteristics and causes of
belly-button fluff鈥攌nown in Australia as 鈥渓int鈥�.
Why does the fluff in people鈥檚 navels tend to be blue, even when they are not
wearing blue clothes? How is fluff affected by such factors as shaving,
piercing, unusual underwear, the colour of one鈥檚 hair?
Thousands of Australians have responded to The Lab鈥檚 survey on these
important issues, and now the rest of the world can too. Go to
www.abc.net.au/science/k2/lint if you would like to take part. But do it
quickly: the survey closes at the end of the month. The data will then be
analysed and the results published. We can鈥檛 wait.
FINALLY, we try to hold back on publishing examples of nominative
determinism, despite the flood of them that readers continue to send in. But
it鈥檚 impossible to gloss over the names of two of the contestants in the Sydney
Olympic games, American high-jumper Nathan Leeper and triple jumper Olena
Hovorova from Ukraine.
There will be more before too long, we can be sure.
