-------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM: New facts and hot stats
from the social sciences
By Richard Morin
Sunday, November 2, 1997; Page C05
The Washington Post
WHEN SCIENCE GOES WACKY: Soggy Cereal, Love
Dolls and the Ig Nobel Prizes
So much silly science, so little time. That's
why we're lucky that Marc Abrahams has
dedicated his life to searching out and
skewering the best of the worst of scientific
research.
For the past seven years, Abrahams has presided
over the Ig Nobel Prizes, which are conferred
annually at a big, boisterous awards ceremony
at Harvard University.
These booby prizes honor research that's so
ghastly, so foolish or so funny that you
couldn't make it up. "I'm not sure that you'd
want to," said Abrahams, who has parlayed a
Harvard undergraduate degree in applied
mathematics into a position as the nation's
guru of academic grunge.
Over the years, Ig Nobels have been awarded to
a team of psychologists who claim to have
taught pigeons to distinguish between the
paintings of Picasso and Monet. Other Igs have
gone to scientists who studied foot odor, to
researchers who investigated why breakfast
cereal gets soggy, and to an zoologist who
wrote a book on how to identify the splattered
bugs on car windshields. Also honored was the
British physicist who proved that buttered
toast does, indeed, usually fall to the floor
butter-side down and the authors of the study
"Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs."
Winners are selected by Abrahams, who edits the
smart and satiric journal the Annals of
Improbable Research. He's assisted by the
scientists and science writers who sit on the
journal's board, as well as by "three strangers
we drag in off the street, to provide a reality
check." Nominations come in by mail, fax and
phone from around the world; some winners have
even nominated themselves.
Since the first award in 1991, the Ig Nobels
have acquired cult status among the super-smart
in this country and abroad. The awards ceremony
invariably is attended by real Nobel Prize
laureates, who typically wear wacky hats or
Groucho glasses and fake mustaches and perform
in songs and skits. (William Lipscomb,
Chemistry `76, was the prize in this year's
Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.) This
year's Ig Nobels ceremony, which was held a few
weeks ago, will be broadcast Nov. 28 on
National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation:
Science Friday." And now Abrahams has a book
just out, "The Best of the Annals of Improbable
Research," which features Ig Nobel winners and
lowlights of past awards ceremonies.
Abrahams said his own greatest-hits list
includes the two Norwegian physicians who
published "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an
Inflatable Doll" in the journal Genitourinary
Medicine. The doctors recounted how they
treated a sea captain who had sneaked into a
sailor's quarters and borrowed "a piece of
[tainted] equipment," Abrahams said. "It was
the first such case ever reported in the
literature."
One of the doll docs was so thrilled with his
Ig Nobel that he paid his own way from Oslo to
attend the awards ceremony. He offered this
piece of cautionary advice: "When you date an
inflatable doll, you're dating everyone who's
ever dated that inflatable doll." So true.
Veterinarian Robert Lopez of New York is
another Ig Nobel star. He won the 1994
entomology prize for collecting ear mites from
cats and then inserting them into his own ears.
He recounted his experiences in the Journal of
the American Veterinary Society.
Since then, Lopez has become a regular at the
Ig Nobel ceremonies. Last year, he even brought
cookies he made from locusts.
Speaking of food, Abrahams recalls a tense
moment at the 1995 awards ceremony. John
Martinez, an Atlanta food distributor, had just
received the nutrition prize for importing
Luwak Coffee. At $200 to $300 a pound, it may
be the most expensive cuppa joe in the world.
It's made from coffee beans eaten and then
excreted by the luwak, (a k a palm civet) a
marsupial native to Indonesia. (For the record,
the critter supposedly eats only the ripest and
best coffee berries, and the beans pass through
reasonably intact.)
"We had five Nobel laureates on the stage and
we brought out five steaming cups of Luwak
Coffee," Abrahams recalled. "Then there was
this wonderful, long moment -- each one holding
a cup, each looking at the other. You knew what
was going through their minds. If one takes a
drink, we've all got to. Well, one took a sip,
and then they all did. Since I had set it up, I
felt I had to as well."
Some Igs have honored the flotsam and jetsam of
popular culture. Ron Popeil, late-night TV
pitch man and inventor of the Veg-O-Matic,
Pocket Fisherman and Mr. Microphone, won the
1993 Ig Nobel prize for consumer engineering.
Don Featherstone took home the art prize last
year for creating the pink plastic lawn
flamingo.
The Igs also have honored dubious feats by
smart people who should have known better. The
1996 chemistry prize went to electrical
engineer George Goble of Purdue University. He
ignited a backyard barbecue in three seconds
using charcoal and three gallons of liquid
oxygen. (Kids -- particularly my kids -- don't
try this at home.)
Sometimes Abrahams skewers pseudo-science, such
as the 1994 mathematics award given to the
Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, which
scoured local crime and divorce statistics to
provide a "county-by-county estimate of how
many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they
don't repent."
While not exactly coveted, the Ig Nobels are
tolerated in good humor by most winners and
other scientists. But there are exceptions. Sir
Robert May, the British government's chief
scientific adviser, complained that the prizes
ridiculed serious science and scientists. (Sir
Bob was particularly peeved over the 1995
physics award given to the British researchers
who studied soggy cereal.)
Get a life, responded the editors of the
British scientific journal Chemistry and
Industry, who rose to Abrahams's defense in an
editorial: "May's misfire only makes him (and
British science) look thin-skinned and
humourless . . . . Long may British scientists
take their rightful places in the Ig Nobel
honour roll."
You can reach The Unconventional Wiz at:
morinr@clark.net
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
-------------------------------------------------------------------------