Ig Nobel Prize

A live frog in magnetic levitation, in an experiment by Andréy Gueim at the University of Nimega and Michael Berry at the University of Bristol, which was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000, and in 2010 would win the Nobel Prize in the same branch.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prize. They are awarded each year in early October to recognize the achievements of ten groups of scientists who "first make people laugh, then make them think." Organized by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), the awards are presented by a series of contributors, including actual Nobel Prize laureates, at a ceremony held at the University's Sanders Theatre. from Harvard. "The awards are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and stimulate everyone's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

Name

The name, given that the awards were created by American Marc Abrahams, is a play on the English word ignoble, which in Spanish means “ignoble”. Over the years, organizers have given many satirical explanations for the origin of the awards' names, including the claim that Ig Nobel was the name of the person who invented "Soda Pop."

History

The first Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1991, although at that time they were awarded discoveries "that could not, or should not, be reproduced." Ten prizes are awarded each year in various categories, including the five categories of the Nobel Prize (physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace), as well as other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and research. interdisciplinary. With the exception of three prizes in the first year, the Ig Nobel Prizes are for true achievement.

The awards are sometimes veiled criticism, as in the two awards for homeopathy research and science education awards given to "the Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance on homeopathy." teaching of evolution, since they advocate creationism and because this is a theory comparable to electromagnetism or Newton's studies on gravity".

Another example is the award given to Social Text after the Sokal scandal. Very often, however, scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect attract attention. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the claim that black holes meet all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to an investigation into why it forms. the fluff in the navel. Another example is research on the 'five second rule', the belief that food dropped on the floor is not contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.

Finally, receiving an Ig Nobel has nothing to do with research capacity or scientific excellence, since Andréy Gueim, winner of the Ig Nobel in physics in 2000 (Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons), has in turn been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010, for his work on graphene.

Ceremony

The prizes are presented by real Nobel Prize winners. Initially it was a ceremony held in a conference room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but is now held at the Sanders Theater at Harvard University. It contains a series of running gags, such as Miss Sweety Poo, a girl who repeatedly yells "Please break up. I'm bored" in a high-pitched voice if the laureates talk for too long. The awards ceremony traditionally closes with the words: "If you haven't won an award - and especially if you have - better luck next year! »

The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, and The Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

Throwing paper airplanes onto the stage is a longstanding Ig Nobel tradition. However, since the 2006 ceremony, this game was suspended due to security reasons. In recent years, physics professor Roy Glauber had been tasked with sweeping the stage clear of planes. However, Glauber was unable to attend the 2005 event, as he was headed to Stockholm to receive an actual Nobel Prize in Physics.

The "Ignitaries Parade" (pun on dignitaries) draws diverse groups to the event. At the 1997 ceremonies, a team of "cryogenic sex researchers" distributed a brochure entitled Safe Sex at Four Kelvin. Delegates to the Massachusetts Museum of Bad Art often display pieces from their collection, showing that bad art and bad science go hand in hand.

Scope

The ceremony is recorded and broadcast live on both US National Public Radio and the Internet. The recording is broadcast every year, on the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, on the radio program Science Friday in that country. In recognition of this work, the public repeatedly chants the name of the radio show's host, Ira Flatow.

Two books have been published about the prizes: The Ig Nobel Prize (2002) and The Ig Nobel Prize 2 (2005), which was later renamed as The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself.

An Ig Nobel Tour has toured the UK and Australia several times.

Criticism

In 1995, Robert May, Baron May of Oxford and chief scientific adviser to the British government, asked that the organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize not award prizes to British scientists, claiming that they were discredited or ridiculed by receiving them. However, several scientists from the mentioned country jumped to defend the prizes, dismissing May's remarks, and the British magazine Chemistry and Industry, in particular, published an article to refute her arguments.

A September 2009 article in The National titled The noble side of the Ig Nobels says that although the Ig Nobel Prizes are a veiled critique of trivial research, history has shown that trivial investigations sometimes lead to important discoveries.

For example, in 2006 a study showing that the malaria-carrying mosquito (Anopheles gambiae) is equally attracted to the odor of Limburger cheese as it is to the odor of human feet had won the Ig Nobel Prize in the area of Biology. As a direct result of these findings, this type of cheese is placed at strategic locations in African nations to combat the malaria epidemic. The important contribution this study inadvertently made toward the preservation of human life highlights the importance of sharing experimental results, regardless of the intended uses of those results.

Another example is Andre Geim, who in 2000 received the lg Nobel Prize in Physics for levitating a frog in a magnetic field, and later in 2010 the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Konstantin Novosiolov for the study of graphene.