What is usually called the year's most entertaining scientific prizes – Ig Nobel – have just been awarded for the 34th time, this time at a ceremony at the top university Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. Several of the prizes were awarded by researchers who have received the Nobel Prize.
Laughter and thought
Ig Nobel is a humorous, research-based parody of the real, noble prize and is awarded annually, just before the winners of the latter are announced. A fundamental criterion is that prize-winning discoveries should first make you laugh and then make you think.
Eleven researchers from Japan and the USA were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in physiology for their discovery that many mammals can breathe with their intestines via the anus. Professor Takanori Takebe says he hopes the findings can one day help treat people suffering from respiratory failure, reports the Japanese news agency Kyodo.
The research group began their work during the COVID-19 crisis when many hospitals had a severe shortage of mechanical ventilators to support the breathing of people with severe infections, reports The Guardian.
Among the awardees is also American James C Liao, who highlights and explains the swimming ability of dead trout and receives the Ig Nobel Physics Prize for it.
A research team from Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium receives the medicine prize for the discovery that fake medicines that cause painful side effects can be more effective than those that do not.
Full masks
And full masks can be distinguished from sober ones using chromatography, according to findings from researchers from the Netherlands and France, who receive the prize in chemistry.
And the coin toss: Researchers behind have come to their conclusion theoretically, but also by tossing a coin in the air 350,757 times. The trend is clear – the coin most often lands with the same side up as before the toss.
For this, they receive the prize in the probability category.
Correction: In an earlier version, the wrong prize category was stated for one of the prizes.
