2016 Ig Nobel Prizes
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The 2016 IgNobel prizes condensed from 2 hours down to 27 minutes:
REPRODUCTION PRIZE [EGYPT] — The effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and humans,
ECONOMICS PRIZE [NEW ZEALAND, UK] — Assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.
PHYSICS PRIZE [HUNGARY, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND] Why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [GERMANY] — Volkswagen, for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested.
MEDICINE PRIZE [GERMANY] If you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [BELGIUM, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY, CANADA, USA] Asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.
PEACE PRIZE [CANADA, USA] Scholarly study called "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit".
BIOLOGY PRIZE [UK] — Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats.
LITERATURE PRIZE [SWEDEN] — Fredrik Sjöberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.
PERCEPTION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.
The Ig Nobel Ceremony was hosted by Marc Abrams.
Diffusion hosted and produced by Ian Woolf,
Production checked by Charles Willock.
The Annals of Improbable Research
December 26, 2016
