This year’s Ig Nobel Spring Eurotour is near upon us:
— NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY, UK — March 15
— IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON, UK — March 17
— EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland — March 21
— UNIVERSITY OF OSLO, Norway — March 24
— STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY, Stockholm, Sweden — March 27
— KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE, Stockholm, Sweden — March 27
— FRI TANKE FÖRLAG, Stockholm, Sweden — March 27
— ORF (television), Vienna, Austria — March 28
— UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ, Austria — March 29
— UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA, Italy — April 6
— NATUURHISTORISCH MUSEUM ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands — April 8.
— EDINBURGH, Scotland. Details TBA.
Shows will feature MARC ABRAHAMS (founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony) and different combinations of these Ig Nobel Prize winners:
- MINNA LYONS (psychopaths and night owls)
- KADER ALLOUNI (using speed bumps to diagnose appendicitis)
- ELIZABETH OBERZAUCHER (mathematical analysis of the man who fathered 888 children)
- RAGHAVENDRA RAU (some business leaders acquire a taste for disasters that do not affect them personally)
- THOMAS THWAITES (living as a goat)
- LUDWIG HUBER (absence of contagious yawning in tortoises)
- ALESSANDRO PLUCHINO, ANDREA RAPISARDA, CESARE GAROFALO (organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random)
- HYNEK BURDA (defecating dogs align their body axis with Earth’s north-south geomagnetic field lines)
- NADIA DOMINICI (walking on water, on the moon)
- KEES MOELIKER (homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck)
- PIERS BARNES (how many group photos are needed to ensure at least one in which nobody blinks)
- FREDRIK SJÖBERG (three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead)
- LAURENT BÈGUE (people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive)
- MARINA DE TOMMASO (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)
Additional SURPRISING PERSONS AND THINGS will appear, here and there.
HAIR NOTE: The show at the University of Oslo, on Friday, March 24, will include the public introduction of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) Woman of the Year. [Also: There will be a hair-centric, brief press event earlier that day, in Oslo.]
INCOMPETENCE NOTE: The tour will feature tributes to the Ig Nobel Prize-winning (in the year 2000) study of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That study is called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”
LIVECAST: The Stockholm University show will be livecast.
DETAILS (which will be updated if/as details change) are on the Improbable Research events page.
UPDATE: Here are highlight reels from the show at the University of Graz and the show at the University of Stockholm: