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NATURE. Vol. 395. 15 October 1998, p. 633

Ig Nobel prizes spotlight Prozac-loving clams


[Boston] At the Eighth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize
Ceremony held last week at Harvard University, Peter Fong
of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania captured the Biology
Prize for "contributing to the happiness of clams by
giving them Prozac." French researcher Jacques Benveniste
received the chemistry award for the second time for his
homeopathic discovery that the 'memory' of water can be
transmitted over telephone lines (see Nature 395, 535;
1998).

Author Deepak Chopra won the Physics Prize for his
unorthodox approach to quantum theory. Harvard physicist
Roy Glauber challenged Chopra's views, arguing that "the
successes of relativistic quantum mechanics in the fields
of psychiatry and emotional well-being have been few."

But another Harvard physicist, Sheldon Glashow, was more
charitable toward Chopra, asking: "Who else could have
imagined quantum nutrition?"

A team of physicians from the Royal Gwent Hospital in
Newport, Wales, won the Medicine Prize for a report
published in The Lancet entitled "A Man Who Pricked His
Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years."