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Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners
- mkl 1mo agoThe official list is at https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 but Ars Technica has a lot more detail.
- cfn 1mo agoI like that so many of the winners attended the ceremony, one should never take yourself too seriously.
- embedding-shape 1mo agoSome great winners this time, personal favorite: > IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>
- VyseofArcadia 1mo agoThis one feels like it deserves more than just an Ig Nobel.
- dinfinity 1mo agoIt's not really a surprise that less ethical people on average are richer than ethical people. Sad, but logical: they more often choose selfishly and thus amass more money. This is the correct direction of causation in this case, imho.
- underlipton 1mo agoIs it? Wealth is used as a proxy for virtue, and has been for a long time. "Nobility" has two meanings, after all. Why the same word, if not the same root sentiment? Unless one definition was originally meant sarcastically.
- zorked 1mo agoIs it? Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. [I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This guy is pretty influential in at least half the globe.
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- underlipton 29d agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49582188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49582188 That's at least one sector of the Christian world that ignores that line. I don't think they're alone. You also have other etymological canaries like "fortune" meaning both "wealth" and "blessing". The thinking is that good things happen to good people, with "good things" including "coming into money". But, as we see, that seems to be erroneous. Just because good things happen to a person doesn't mean that they're good.
- mdp2021 28d agoYou are reading the term too literally. (And by the way, you are using a severely outdated translation.)
- howunfortunate 1mo agoI knew immediately this was BS, sure enough, someone already beat me to it with the comment explaining why. Man, I'm so ashamed of my field (experimental psychology). Maybe ~60% of publications are literally worse than useless (that is, they are outright intentional lies).
- bethekidyouwant 1mo agoThe damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why anyone would even bother engaging with (experimental psychology)
- howunfortunate 1mo agoIf you have a Ph.D. you can somewhat sort the wheat from the chaff. But it's 100% not worth it for the layman. Better to just ignore it. That's why, even though it's incredibly sad to see, I can hardly begrudge the current administration their "defund anything and everything using keyword search". Since they can't trust the experts, that's really about the best that can be done from their perspective.
- analog31 29d agoThe ones who are vetting these articles have PhDs. Disclosure: PhD
- howunfortunate 29d agoOh, I know. There are many reasons why peer review doesn't work including but not limited to (1) motivated reasoning AKA complicity in whatever lie is being pushed (2) no real incentive to put effort into peer review (3) laziness and irresponsibility, see also point 2 (4) the "somewhat" qualifier I put in my original comment. I'm being critical of peer reviewers here, but it's a genuinely very difficult job that takes massive effort to do well. And then there's actual malpractice like editing data, which is functionally impossible to catch in peer review if the authors are clever. The whole system replies on trust, and trust is completely underserved.
- jmclnx 1mo ago>The 36th ceremony took place on September 3rd in the Congress Center of Zurich, Switzerland, and was hosted by the University of Zurich and ETH Domain, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests. Another loss for the US thanks to Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize Also, every political speech needs a "Miss Sweetie Poo".
- abirch 1mo agoThe damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why any other NATO nation would buy any weapons from the USA.
- Loughla 1mo agoThey buy our weapons because we make a shit ton of them. We're not great at a lot of things, but manufacturing weapons for mass slaughter is up towards the top of our specialties.
- 3eb7988a1663 1mo agoThis is likely to change. The US has said that previously agreed arms shipments may be now delayed, because the US is cutting in line to restock their own supplies first.
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- sandworm101 1mo agoAre they still using the little girl? THAT invention deserves its own ignoble category for contribution to public discord. This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA
- varjag 1mo agoA paper am a coauthor of uses an Ig Nobel winning article as a reference. Because in fact it was a serious piece of research with practical implications.
- conception 29d agoThey all are serious research.
- varjag 29d agoSure but it’s certainly not the messaging of IgNobel
- dguest 27d agoIgNobel has evolved. Years ago their tag line was that they were for research "that cannot or should not be reproduced". Now it's to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". Over the years they went from being a prize for joke science to a prize for serious science that is funny.
- jdw64 1mo ago[dead]
- peter_d_sherman 1mo ago>"But this year’s winning team didn’t go the robot route; instead, they adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. [...] The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips." Strangely, this idea has at least a small amount of merit... The idea that an organic, carbon-based structure (in the above case, a mosquito proboscis -- but it could have been a separate, non-living individually 3D printed from organic materials, organic part) would make a good 3D print head with exceedingly fine resolution, is not a terrible idea! (Note that for the record, I do not endorse killing mosquitos, or any other insect to make 3D print heads, or really, anything else!)
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1mo agoFWIW IgNoble award winners aren't inherently bad projects. Some are bad research but the winners tend to be projects that just sound weird or stupid but have legitimately research value.
- adw 1mo agoThe famous levitating frog guy has the double; one Nobel, one IgNobel.
- magneticnorth 1mo agoIt wasn't clear to me in the article, but the best splash-free urinal ("nautilus"), is the tall skinny one second-from-right in the photo. In addition to having the correct angle to minimize splash, it also fits a wide range of heights and is easier to clean than some of the other designs they tried.
- D-Coder 1mo agoThis article had me at pneumotachometers (emphasis mine): > Unno used a pair of pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases) in parallel for his experiments to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.
- subarctic 29d agoLaunched in 1991, so i guess the ig doesn't stand for instagram
- maest 29d agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignoble https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignoble
- pks016 29d agoFor Biology; the paper was retracted due to ethical issues.