Drunk Worms, Dead Trout, and Milk-Spewing Cows: The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last night at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), returning to the real world after four years of being held virtually during the pandemic. Ten prizes were awarded for research that makes us laugh, and then make us think. The theme for this year's award was Murphy's Law, which simply says, "if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong." An operetta on Murphy's Law was performed (or was it Murphy slaw?). As if illustrating the contrariness of that law, the ceremony went off without a hitch, emceed as always by Marc Abrahams. The awards, bestowed by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, have been held annually since 1991. Continue reading for a list of the winners.

 

PEACE

B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.

REFERENCE: "Pigeons in a Pelican", B.F. Skinner, American Psychologist, vol 15, no. 1, 1960, pp. 28-37.

BOTANY

Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants.

REFERENCE: "Boquila trifoliolata Mimics Leaves of an Artificial Plastic Host Plant," Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, Plant Signaling and Behavior, vol. 17, no. 1, 2022.

ANATOMY

Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari, for studying whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere.

REFERENCE: "Genetic Determinism and Hemispheric Influence in Hair Whorl Formation," Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari, Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, vol. 125, no. 2, April 2024, article 101664.

MEDICINE

Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.

REFERENCE: "How Side Effects Can Improve Treatment Efficacy: A Randomized Trial," Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, Brain, vol. 147, no. 8, August 2024, pp. 2643–2651.



PHYSICS

James C. Liao, for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

REFERENCE: "Neuromuscular Control of Trout Swimming in a Vortex Street: Implications for Energy Economy During the Kármán Gait," James C. Liao, The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 207, 2004, pp. 3495-3506.

REFERENCE: "Passive Propulsion in Vortex Wakes," David N. Beal, Franz S. Hover, Michael S. Triantafyllou, James C. Liao, and George V. Lauder, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 549, 2006, pp. 385-402.

REFERENCE: "Fish Swimming Efficiency," James C. Liao, Current Biology, vol. 32, June 20, 2022, pp. R666-R671.

PHYSIOLOGY

Ryo Okabe, Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson, Gokul Kannan, Eiji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe, for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.

REFERENCE: "Mammalian Enteral Ventilation Ameliorates Respiratory Failure," Ryo Okabe, Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson, Gokul Kannan, Eiji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe, Med, vol. 2, June 11, 2021, pp. 1-11.

PROBABILITY

František Bartoš, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Henrik Godmann, and many colleagues, for showing, both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side as it started.

REFERENCE: "Fair Coins Tend to Land on the Same Side They Started: Evidence from 350,757 Flips," František Bartoš, et al., arXiv 2310.04153, 2023.  

CHEMISTRY

Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen, for using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.

REFERENCE: "Chromatographic Separation of Active Polymer–Like Worm Mixtures by Contour Length and Activity," Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen, Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 23, 2022, article eabj7918.

DEMOGRAPHY

Saul Justin Newman, for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.

REFERENCE: "Supercentenarians and the Oldest-Old Are Concentrated into Regions with No Birth Certificates and Short Lifespans," Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 704080, 2019.

REFERENCE: "Supercentenarian and Remarkable Age Records Exhibit Patterns Indicative of Clerical Errors and Pension Fraud," Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 2024.

BIOLOGY

Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.

REFERENCE: "Factors Involved in the Ejection of Milk," Fordyce Ely and W.E. Petersen, Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 3, 1941, pp. 211-23.

Here is last night's ceremony in its entirety.



A good time was had by all.