As I remember, it was some years ago I came across the Ig-Nobel Awards. At that time they were a rather localized bit of humor thought up by staffers of the University of Washington Columns humor magazine. Recently I noted it has a new home, Harvard University's Annals of Improbable Research Magazine, with real Nobel laureates handing out annual prizes and the Associated Press hyping the winners.
Winning projects this year were:
Three Japanese physicists tested whether banana peels are really as slippery as cartoons would have us believe.
A Canadian professor and five colleagues' study "Seeing Jesus In Toast" led them to trying to understand what happens to the brains of people who see human faces in pieces of toast.
Three psychologists attempted to find out if people who habitually stayed up and arose late tended to be more self-admiring, more manipulative and more psychopathic than people who habitually arose early.
Six public health figures investigated whether it is mentally hazardous to own a cat.
A dozen biologists carefully documented the fact that dogs align themselves with earth's magnetic field when defecating.
Three artists measured the relative pain people suffer when looking at an ugly painting, versus looking at a pretty painting, while a laser beam is aimed at their hand.
A Michigan doctor and three colleagues tried treating "uncontrollable" nosebleed with strips of cured pork stuffed into the nasal cavities of a child.
Two Norwegian biologists tested whether reindeer were frightened by humans dressed to resemble polar bears.
Four nutritionists studied using infant fecal bacteria as potential probiotic starter cultures for fermented sausages.
(For extended coverage see Associated Press, Sept. 19, 2014.)
