Last updated: October 2007
Ig Nobel Awards 2007

“The Ig Nobel awards are arguably the highlight of the
scientific calendar.” - Nature

Here at The National Student we’re inclined to agree. The Ig Nobel Awards 2007 brought the usual line-up of unusual research and dubious experimentation, showing that science can often be at its best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
We take a look at this year’s best pieces of improbable research, that will make you laugh as much as it will make you think...

Peace
The 2007 Ig Nobel Award for peace was awarded to the US Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA for their novel way of disarming the enemy. The laboratory won the award for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon - the so-called ‘gay bomb’, which would make enemy combatants sexually irresistible to one another.
The labs research paper ‘Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals’, a three-page proposal exploring a number of non-lethal chemical weapons, mention’s a category of chemical that effects ‘human behaviour so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely effected. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behaviour.’
Despite the accolade the Air Force personnel contacted were not willing to attend the award ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater to accept the award in person.
Documents detailing the idea were unearthed through a freedom of information request by the Sunshine Project, a lobby group that opposes biological weapons.
“We don’t know if this document was the start and end of it or whether, in fact, this project continued and perhaps continues to this day,” said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and the man behind the Ig Nobel awards.

Medicine
Many people suffer from the pain of sore throats, but this year’s winner of the Ig Nobel Award for medicine hoped to uncover information that would prevent this and other problems for people in a particular profession.
Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, were honoured for their penetrating medical report ‘Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects,’ published in the British Medical Journal, which aimed to evaluate information on the practice and associated ill effects of sword swallowing.
The duo gained information from almost 50 sword-swallowers taken from the membership lists of the Sword Swallowers’ Association International.
The study’s results found that, “Major complications are more likely when the swallower is distracted or swallows multiple or unusual swords or when previous injury is present. Perforations mainly involve the oesophagus and usually have a good prognosis. Sore throats are common, particularly while the skill is being learnt or when performances are too frequent. Major gastrointestinal bleeding sometimes occurs, and occasional chest pains tend to be treated without medical advice. Sword swallowers without healthcare coverage expose themselves to financial as well as physical risk.”
The study cites a few nasty examples of sword-related injury describing how one swallower had lacerated his pharynx as he tried to swallow a curved sabre. Another damaged his oesophagus and developed an inflammation of the protective membrane around his lungs ‘after being distracted by a misbehaving macaw on his shoulder’, and a belly dancer suffered a major haemorrhage ‘when a bystander pushed dollar bills into her belt causing three blades in her oesophagus to scissor’.
In conclusion Witcombe and Meyer found that, “Sword swallowers run a higher risk of injury when they are distracted or adding embellishments to their performance, but injured performers have a better prognosis than patients who suffer iatrogenic perforation.”

Literature
This year’s winner for word-based research was Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word ‘the’ - and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.
Published in The Indexer (The International Journal of Indexing) her study entitled ‘The Definite Article: Acknowledging ‘The’ in Index Entries’, asks the question, “The’ is an unusual word. It is crucial, and common, yet it is regularly omitted or ignored. What should indexers do about it?”
The study shows that taking the word ‘the’ into account was useful in many alphabetising situations.
“In the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, each ‘the’ is as important as the others. If we sort on the initial ‘the’ (as well as the following ones in their turn), then we are according each of the articles equal importance,” Glenda said.
She did concede that a blanket rule for the inclusion of ‘the’ in indexes did lead to long lists of entries all beginning with the word, making it hard to find what you are looking for.
Dr Abrahams added that a particular problem arose when trying to index the rock band the The.

Nutrition
Obesity is a growing health issue in the western world and this year’s Ig Nobel for nutrition acknowledged Brian Wansink’s important research into the ‘seemingly boundless appetites of human beings’.
For the study ‘Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake,’ Wansink used self-refilling soup bowls, to examine whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation.
Fifty-four participants took part in the experiment of bowls with two visibility levels, one a normal bowl of soup and a second that would slowly and imperceptibly refill with soup as it was consumed.
Wansink found that participants who were unknowingly eating from self-refilling bowls ate more soup than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls.
The study concluded that, “It seems that people use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs. The importance of having salient, accurate visual cues can play an important role in the prevention of unintentional overeating.”

Chemistry
The Ig Nobel prize for chemistry really does fit into the category of ‘improbable research’. Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan was awarded for developing a way to extract vanillin, vanilla fragrance and flavouring, from cow dung.
Toscanini’s Ice Cream, the finest ice cream shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a new ice cream flavor in honour of Mayu Yamamoto, and introduced it at the Ig Nobel ceremony. The flavor is called ‘Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist.’ Yamamoto was present at the awards to indulge in his name-sake flavour.

Other winners were:

Physics: L Mahadevan of Harvard and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Santiago University, Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.
Biology: Johanna van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, for a census of the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds.
Linguistics: Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University, for showing that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taiwan, for patenting a device that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them.
Aviation: Patricia V Agostino, Santiago A Plano and Diego A Golombek of Argentina, for the discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.