FEEDBACK’S favourite awards, the Ig Nobel prizes, were handed out on 2 October at Harvard University by three Nobel laureates and the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research. Here is a sample of the winners.
The engineering prize went posthumously to Edward A. Murphy Jr and John Paul Stapp, and their surviving colleague George Nichols, in recognition of their discovery of the fundamental principle known as Murphy’s law, which states that if anything can go wrong, it will.
In illustration of the principle, it has taken more than 50 years to cite these engineers, who famously recognised the obvious while working on rocket sleds at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1949. Stapp and Nichols were testing how well the human body withstands acceleration on the sleds when Murphy arrived bringing a set of strain gauges that were supposed to measure the acceleration more accurately.
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However, the gauges measured no acceleration at all, because someone had hooked them up incorrectly. Thoroughly annoyed, Murphy grumbled something approximating to his immortal law, although observers have never been able to agree exactly what he said – another illustration of the principle. Later, Stapp, who insisted on riding the rocket sleds himself, told reporters that he had escaped serious injury in the dangerous experiments by carefully taking account of “Murphy’s law”. A legend was born.
Showing the brain-building value of learning to navigate London’s streets earned the Ig Nobel prize in medicine for Eleanor Maguire and six colleagues at University College London. MRI scans showed that the brains of London taxi drivers have more grey matter in the rear hippocampus than other people (New Scientist, 18 March 2000, p 11). The longer the drivers have been finding their way through the maze of London streets, the more extra grey matter they have, suggesting that learning London is truly a brain-building exercise. Whether driving around in simpler cities builds smaller brains is a question to be explored in the future, Maguire told Feedback.
“An analysis of the forces required to drag sheep over various surfaces” in Applied Ergonomics (vol 33, p 523) – previously spotted by Feedback on 14 December 2002 – won a seven-person Australian team the physics prize. Dragging sheep to a shearing workstation requires “close to the maximum acceptable limits for pulling forces for the most capable of males”, Jack Harvey, John Culvenor and colleagues wrote. The best floor for the task – at least from the sheep-puller’s point of view – turned out to be wooden strips on a 1-in-10 slope. Feedback awaits further tests on more recalcitrant creatures such as mules, camels, or – the ultimate test – teenagers.
Wide-eyed observation brought C. W. “Kees” Moeliker of the Rotterdam Nature Museum the Ig Nobel biology prize. Birds began colliding with the museum’s new glass-walled wing as soon as it was built in 1995, and one day an unusually loud “thud” sent Moeliker dashing to a downstairs office to see what had happened. He spotted a dead male mallard duck on the ground, and another male mallard standing nearby. Then he watched in amazement as the unhurt mallard mounted the dead bird and mated with it for over an hour, stopping only when Moeliker interrupted it. He summed up the incident as “the first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard” in the journal Deinsea, (vol 8, p 243; see ).
Last but not least, the peace prize went to Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for leading a “lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives”. Bihari’s uncle bribed a government official to declare him dead in 1976, and despite walking evidence to the contrary, Bihari remains legally dead in the eyes of the Indian government. He is now the organiser and leader of India’s Association of Dead People.
For the full list of awards and details of the ceremony, go to .
THE Ig Nobel ceremony set us wondering how treasured these prizes are by their recipients. We haven’t been able to check how many of the awards are sitting in prominent positions on their owners’ mantelpieces, but we do know that many people have been so keen to get a prize that they have nominated themselves. Of these, however, only two were successful. Marc Abrahams, the chief culprit behind the Igs, reveals in his book The Ig Nobel Prizes (Dutton, New York) that the only self-nominated winners were a pair of Norwegians who investigated the effects of ale, garlic and sour cream on the appetite of leeches. Presumably no one else would come close enough to nominate them.
FINALLY, and leaving the topic of the Ig Nobels for now, reader Hedley Austin has sent us a photo of a draconian sign outside his local pub. It says: “Due to licence restrictions, we are unable to allow people under the age of 18 inside or outside these premises.” Which, we feel, leaves people under the age of 18 in something of a quandary.
CRYOGENICS enthusiasts will be thrilled. While walking past the meat counter in an Asda supermarket in Wales, reader Stuart Tickner came across a sign saying: “If you would like a price for our turkeys, please see a frozen assistant for information”