Laugh and Then Think: 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes

If you were going to describe the Ig Nobel Prizes to a professional colleague you might use this quote, which serves as the organization’s motto: “Research that makes people laugh and then think.” If, however, you were describing it to friends or family, this other quote (which is featured on the organization’s website) is a little more colorful: “It’s a collection of, like, actual Nobel Prize winners giving away prizes to real scientists for doing f’d-up things… it’s awesome.” It is awesome. And the 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes were just awarded this September 18^th at Harvard. Several of the winning research papers are available via ELM: The Public Health Prize was awarded for “investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat:”

"Describing the Relationship between Cat Bites and Human Depression Using Data from an Electronic Health Record," David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013, e70585. Academic Search Premier.

The Biology Prize was given for “carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines:”

"Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth's magnetic field," Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, Frontiers in Zoology, 10:80, 27 December 27, 2013. InfoTrac Student Edition.

The Medicine Prize was awarded for “treating ‘uncontrollable’ nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork:”

"Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient with Glanzmann Thrombasthenia," Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, vol. 120, no. 11, November 2011, pp. 732-36. Academic Search Premier.

  Some of the other awarded research is pretty specialized (natch) so it’s only available in more specialized scholarly databases. But even the citations are worth a look. The Art Prize, for example, was given “for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.” I feel like I’ve been to museums like that. The Neuroscience Prize winner was awarded “for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.” Besides awe, I guess? You might laugh, you might think, and you might use these research reports as a fun intro to library database content for your students or researchers.