2023-09-15 00:00:12
Screenshot of the 32nd Ig Nobel award ceremony, in 2022.
If the beginning of this sentence easily transforms in your eyes into « esarhp ettec ed tubed el iS », that is to say if you are able to read a text backwards, you could have been the ideal guinea pig for the study which, in the communication category, was awarded an award at the 33rd Ig Nobel ceremony , Thursday September 14. To those lost who have not followed the thirty-two previous editions, let us remember that the Ig Nobel (a play on words with the adjective “ignoble”) constitutes the supreme reward in this often funny and refreshing field which we call “improbable science”. The one that shows that the scientific method has a serious answer to crazy questions – or that wearing a white coat does not prevent you from having a solid sense of humor.
Usually, the awards ceremony takes place at the Sanders Theater at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), but, since 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, it takes place by videoconference. The fun loses what the health of the spectators gains… A tradition is nevertheless maintained: the winners receive a note of 10,000 billion old Zimbabwean dollars, a denomination which, despite its astronomical number of zeros, no longer has any value due to the hyperinflation experienced by this currency.
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Each year, ten Ig Nobels are distributed in ten different categories which fluctuate according to the moods of the jury led by the American Marc Abrahams, mastermind of this good-natured high mass. Thus, the 2023 vintage does not include an Ig Nobel for peace, but we find one for literature, where we distinguish researchers who have studied the sensations experienced when we write a word a very big big big big big number of times. The experience would provoke in some a feeling of never-before-seen (the opposite of the feeling of deja-vu), and the author of these lines confirms that we have never seen, in the columns of the Mondethe word “big” written five times in a row.
In the chemistry and geology category, an essay explaining why geologists have the habit, in the field, of licking – or even tasting – the stones that they collect or extract is rewarded. Since we’re on the taste buds, let’s also point out the crowning study in nutrition: two Japanese researchers wondered if we could increase taste sensations by eating with chopsticks – and drinking with straws – passed through by an electric current . An original way to add juice to dishes…
Corpses to count hairs
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