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I'm ignored again in Ig Nobel ignominy 
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Ig Nobel Award salutes those whose work 'cannot or should not be reproduced'
Story & Illustration
By Grant McKenzie |
Nothing brings a patriotic mist to the eye
quite so easily as scientific achievement.
To that end, I salute the esteemed winners of the 2001 Ig Nobel awards. For those who are
unaware of the importance of this annual event, the Ig Nobels honour people whose
achievements “cannot or should not be reproduced.”
 First up, in the field of medicine, is
Canada’s own Peter Barss of McGill University for his impactful medical report “Injuries
Due to Falling Coconuts.” (Published in: The Journal of Trauma.)
I was, however, rather perturbed that the Nobel judges ignored my own riveting paper,
“Ouch: Slipping on a banana peel and banging that pointy bone in your elbow that
makes your whole arm tingle and makes your face scrunch up like a prune.”
Another proud Canadian, this time in the field of economics, is Wojciech Kopczuk of the
University of British Columbia. Teaming up with Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan
Business School, Kopczuk pondered: “If people find a way to postpone their deaths,
would that qualify them for a lower rate on the inheritance tax?” (Reference: Dying
to Save Taxes.)
Again, the Nobel judges ignored my paper: “Faking your own death to make your in-laws
pay off your credit card and garner sympathy.”
 In the turbulent field of physics,
David Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts won an award for his partial solution to
the question of why shower curtains billow inwards. Thanks to $28,000 worth of
high-powered computer software, a PhD in engineering and too much free time, Dr. Schmidt,
31, discovered that his showering technique creates a miniature hurricane turned on its
side.
My own contribution to this field of study couldn’t find a publisher as I pondered:
“Why does my wife insist on borrowing my razor to shave her legs, thereby making it
so dull it turns my face into a kitten’s scratching post?”
And where would the world be
without the invaluable contribution of Buck Weimer of Pueblo, Colo.? Buck took home the
prize in Biology for inventing Under-Ease, airtight underwear with a replaceable
charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases before they escape (www.under-tec.com).
I find it difficult to accept that Buck’s invention won over my own BeerGutBeGone
T-shirt and SaggyButtBeGone knickers. Of course, he does have the tearjerker motto:
'Wear them for the ones you love', which is slightly better than my own: 'Wear one and get
some'.
In the field of literature, John Richards of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe
Protection Society, won for his efforts “to protect, promote, and defend the
differences between plural and possessive.”
I must shamefully admit that I wasn’t even aware the apostrophe had joined the
endangered species list.
In psychology, the prize went to Lawrence W. Sherman of Miami University, Ohio, for his
influential research report An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool
Children.
This won over my own report: An Ecological Study of Insanity in Large Groups of
Cubicle-trapped Adults.
In the field of astrophysics, but also a contender in the theological category, Dr. Jack
and Rexella Van Impe of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Mich., won for their
discovery that black holes fulfil all the technical requirements to be the location of
Hell.
This won over my own revised report: “Is This Hell? An Ecological Study of
Insanity in Large Groups of Cubicle-trapped Adults.”
You know the judges were hoping for free admission when they awarded the Peace prize to
Viliumas Malinauskus of Grutas, Lithuania, for creating the amusement park known as Stalin
World.
Along with the attractive perimeter of barbed wire and guard towers, my favourite ride has
to be the mock railway that carries visitors in cattle wagons to give one a hint of what
it feels like to be deported.
In the wish-I-had-thought-of-that-category of technology, the prize was awarded jointly to
John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in the year 2001, and
to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012.
It gives me hope that my patent on earwax will go through without a hitch.
In public health, Chittaranjan
Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences,
Bangalore, India, won for their probing medical discovery that “nose-picking is a
common activity among adolescents.” (Reference: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.)
How this won over my own startling investigative report, “butt scratching among
middle-aged men on the rise,” I’ll never know.
Maybe I’ll have better luck next year.
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On one Thanksgiving night, as my husband and I were lying in bed after a
wonderful dinner, the foul smell became unbearable for both of us. My husband ruminated,
thinking,"I can't divorce my wife over this, but I have to do something." At
that moment, he began to develop the idea of a pair of air-tight underwear with a filter
that would eliminate the foul smell. For the next few months he researched filter
materials and made a prototype of the underwear. Click Here for more |
| John Richards, a retired journalist, was honoured for his "efforts
to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". Mr Richards scours shops and businesses in
his home town of Boston, Lincolnshire, in search of missing and misplaced apostrophes.
His newly-formed Apostrophe
Protection Society has so far persuaded the local library to remove offending punctuation
from its "CD's" sign.
Click Here for more |
| Earlier this year, the shower curtain mystery was tackled by David
Schmidt, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts -- and for
his work, he won the Ig Nobel in physics. Schmidt said that the problem seems simpler than it is...
Click Here for more |
So they studied nose-picking behaviour in a sample of 200 adolescents
from four urban schools. The findings? “Almost the entire sample admitted to
nose-picking, with a median frequency of four times per day; the frequency was more than
20 times per day in 7.6 per cent of the sample. Nearly 17 per cent of subjects considered
that they had a serious nose-picking problem.
Click Here for more |
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Winners of the
IgŪ Nobel Prize
The 2001 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
MEDICINE
Peter Barss of McGill University, for his impactful medical report "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts." [PUBLISHED IN: The Journal of Trauma, vol. 21, no. 11,
1984, pp. 990-1.]
PHYSICS
David
Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts for his partial solution to
the question of why shower curtains billow inwards.
BIOLOGY
Buck Weimer of
Pueblo, Colorado for inventing Under-Ease,
airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases
before they escape.
ECONOMICS
Joel Slemrod, of the University of Michigan Business School, and Wojciech Kopczuk, of
University of British Columbia, for their conclusion that people find a way to postpone
their deaths if that that would qualify them for a lower rate on the inheritance tax.
[REFERENCE:"Dying to
Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," National
Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8158, March 2001.]
LITERATURE
John Richards
of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society, for his efforts to protect,
promote, and defend the differences between plural and possessive.
PSYCHOLOGY
Lawrence W. Sherman of
Miami University, Ohio, for his influential research report "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children."
[PUBLISHED IN: Child Development,
vol. 46, no. 1, March 1975, pp. 53-61.]
ASTROPHYSICS
Dr. Jack and Rexella Van Impe of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Michigan, for
their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location
of Hell. [REFERENCE: The March 31, 2001 television and Internet broadcast of the
"Jack Van Impe Presents" program. (at about the 12 minute mark).]
PEACE
Viliumas Malinauskus of Grutas, Lithuania, for creating the amusement park known as "Stalin World"
TECHNOLOGY
Awarded jointly to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in
the year 2001, and to the Australian
Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent
#2001100012.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and
Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is
a common activity among adolescents. [REFERENCE: "A Preliminary
Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry,
vol. 62, no. 6, June 2001, pp. 426-31.]
Click here
to see the winners from former years.
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