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IG Nobel Prize Winners 2025
- JeremyTheo 1y agoThe cacio e pepe paper posted here a couple of months ago won it in the category of physics: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/37/4/044122/3345324/Phase-behavior-of-Cacio-e-Pepe-sauce https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/37/4/044122/3345324/Pha...
- wer232essf 1y ago[dead]
- fouronnes3 1y agoI cooked cacio e pepe a few times over the past few months specifically because I saw it on HN there! It's delicious. Try it!
- JeremyTheo 1y agoMe too! That’s why I found it so exciting to find it as IG Nobel Prize Winnder!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cs702 1y agoThe winner for Psychology made me think, for a moment, about HN: "Telling people they are intelligent correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness: The influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism," by Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles E. Gignac. Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289621000799 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... . The entire list is hilarious, and also makes you think. Go read the whole thing!
- Esophagus4 1y agoOh boy… this is going to be a tough pill for me to swallow…
- readthenotes1 1y agoIn your case, it's because you actually are smart
- hagbard_c 1y agoThe plot goes deeper, and deeper. Maybe it is plots all the way down?
- firtoz 1y agoThat's absolutely right!
- j_bum 1y agoI don’t imagine you meant to, but this triggers my LLM sense because of the way Claude Sonnet 4 responds to any critique.
- amelius 1y ago> Go read the whole thing! No, if you're looking for a cure go read something about, say, quantum physics instead.
- eulgro 1y agoI wonder if the guy ingesting Teflon to replace food heard about PFAS...?
- belter 1y agoThey should add Avi Loeb PhD powered obsession with the exploding traffic of alien probes crossing our Solar System.... Maybe the Galactic Council just opened a new discount shuttle route over Class 4 Civilizations areas like us: (Non-Fusion, Non-Warp and apparently Non-Skeptical...)
- shireboy 1y agoIg Nobel has been around a while. I wonder if there is an opportunity for them to add a feature whereby they (and donors) could _sponsor_ research in areas that would be considered candidates. Research that would otherwise be too trivial or arcane to be funded.
- timthorn 1y agoIf you're in the London area at the end of October, the Royal Institution is hosting a special event where "Ig Nobel Prize winners will gather on stage to ask each other questions about their work" https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/ig-nobels-face-face https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/ig-nobels-face-face
- huflungdung 1y ago> bonjour ca va? > > me not speaking a word of french > > consumes alcohol > > ca va bien merci et tu?
- alkyon 1y agoAfter consuming even more: >> .. et toi?
- huflungdung 1y ago[dead]
- erk__ 1y agoThe 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony is also up on YouTube and is worth a watch as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1cP4xKd_L4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1cP4xKd_L4
- usrnm 1y ago> Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language. I thought it was common knowledge?
- RickJWagner 1y agoOf course! It also makes you wittier, taller, and better looking. Everybody knows that.
- uncircle 1y agoNot only you, but also makes people of the opposite sex around you more attractive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_goggles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_goggles
- kijin 1y agoBut now you can put it on wikipedia and cite a proper double-blinded study!
- magneticnorth 1y agoLots of science is "common knowledge"! This is one of those things that I'm glad to see confirmed in a study.
- pointlessone 1y agoDoes this count as evidence for Ballmer Peak?
- Delk 1y agoI thought it was common knowledge that it makes you feel like you could speak a foreign language better. I don't think it's that obvious that the improvement would be objective or that others around you would feel the same way about you. (And of course there's a Ballmer peak in any case.)
- schiffern 1y ago
- qwertytyyuu 1y agotest whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content. …
- zdragnar 1y agoOh wow, I thought you were proposing a silly experiment, but that was the chemistry winner...
- moi2388 1y agoYeah, I don’t understand how this study was deemed ethical, let alone win.
- timr 1y agoBecause Teflon is harmless to the human body. It is inert. It interacts with nothing. We literally make replacement body parts out of it. This is a case where conventional wisdom on HN is wildly out of sync with actual science.
- cyberpunk 1y agoDrink a pint of it then?
- timr 1y agoIt's a solid.
- genter 1y agoJust because it's inert doesn't mean it's harmless. I'm pretty sure that if you shove a wad of it in your windpipe, you won't last very long. Also go check out water poisoning.
- timr 1y agoYes, just like you can die if you choke on food.
- the_af 1y agoSome are funny, but not ridiculous. For example, > for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies. This isn't absurd. It is currently thought that the stripes are NOT for camouflage, since simulated predator vision (such as lions) cannot resolve them. It is believed that one reason for the stripes could be to act as a deterrent against flies (how exactly, not sure). In this sense, testing whether it works on cows isn't absurd!
- more_corn 1y agoThe great thing about this award is that it’s often real and beneficial science. The study debunking blue zones won, but it was some of the best science I’ve ever seen. (Removing false knowledge is more important than adding new knowledge) Turns out the Mediterranean diet doesn’t help you live to a hundred, there was just a lot of pension fraud in Italy. Turns out best predictor of Japanese centenarians is if the local records hall was destroyed in World War Two (because the records were replaced by non native speaking records clerks)
- Delk 1y agoOf course Ig Nobel prizes aren't necessarily intended only for absurd or ridiculous research. Their stated purpose is to honour achievements that "make people laugh, then think". Sometimes that means the achievement (or "achievement") is something genuinely absurd. Other times it's not.
- ProllyInfamous 1y agoFrom yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45296112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45296112 (for /u/DanG to merge)