The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Ig Nobel Achievements distilled into limerick form
by Martin Eiger, Improbable Research Limerick Laureate
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think. For details of all the Ig Nobel Prize–winning achievements, see each year’s special Ig Nobel issue of the magazine, and also see the winners lists.
1993 Ig Nobel Literature Prize
Eric Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong, and their 972 co-authors, for publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages. [The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 329, no. 10, September 2, 1993, pp. 673–82. The authors are from the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.]
On top’s where the title should go.
Then list all the authors below.
Should the abstract and text
Of the paper come next?
If you’ve run out of room for them, no.
2008 Ig Nobel Literature Prize
David Sims of Cass Business School, London, U.K., for his lovingly written study “You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations.” [The full citation for the study: “You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations,” David Sims, Organization Studies, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1625–40.] (Image credit: Эдуард Тимченков)
The people I work with are crass.
My boss is a pain in the ass.
Now that bastard, that jerk,
Is bringing to work
Some dumb anger management class.
1994 Ig Nobel Biology Prize
W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and Wayne Hansen, for their breakthrough study, “The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops,” and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency. [Published in Military Medicine, vol. 158, August, 1993, pp. 346-348.]
We thank them for serving the nation.
We owe them some quantification.
They may want to know
How often they go,
And conversely, how much constipation.
_____________________
The article above is from the July-August 2014 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
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