The Shnobel Peace Prize was awarded to scientists who tested the hypothesis that men need beards to protect their faces. The laureates in other fields were specialists who studied feline language, turned a rhinoceros over, established, using the example of the post-Soviet space, the connection between the weight of a politician and the level of corruption in the country, found out the healing properties of orgasm and made other equally important discoveries.
Harvard announced the winners of the 31st Ignobel Prize, which is better known in Russia as the Shnobel Prize. This year, like last, the ceremony took place online for obvious reasons. The prize has been awarded in ten disciplines, and some of the winners have even joined the broadcast.
The award was established in 1991 by Mark Abrahams, editor of the Journal of Irreproducible Results (now Annals of Incredible Research). The prize has no monetary expression, just as it does not have a clear list of scientific disciplines – it only repeats the Nobel Prize in general terms. Prize winners are announced annually at Harvard on the eve of or during the so-called Nobel Week.
As the popularity of the Ignobel Prize grew, its organizers changed the main criteria for its award. If earlier the laureates were honored for discoveries “which cannot or should not be reproduced”, now a more politically correct formulation has triumphed – “for achievements that at first make you laugh, and then make you think.”
For meowing research and healing orgasm
Winner of the Shnobel Prize in the field biology was the Swedish researcher Suzanne Schötz, who spent ten years on learning cat language and the ways cats try to communicate their thoughts and desires to humans. In 2011, together with a colleague, she released the first serious study – “Comparative acoustic analysis of the rumbling of four cats.” As noted by the authors, when comparing sound level, duration and number of rumbling cycles, as well as other parameters, “significant differences between cats” were noted. The research continued, and the result was the monograph “Melody in communication between man and cat (mews): origins, past, present and future”, published in 2016.
In turn, the award in the field medicine received an international group of scientists from Britain, Turkey and Germany, which studied the effectiveness of orgasm in the treatment of nasal congestion. Researchers who evaluated the quality of nasal breathing in five different situations – before sex, immediately after sex, 30, 60 and 180 minutes after orgasm, conducted similar studies, replacing sex with a spray for the common cold. It was found that orgasm “improves breathing through the nose to the same level” as the use of a remedy for the common cold. Scientists have shared these conclusions in the scientific journal “Ear, Nose and Throat”.
For beards, submarine cockroaches and upside-down rhinos
Shnobelevskaya peace prize awarded to American scientists who studied the hypothesis that beards in people appeared to protect the face from blows… The results of the study were published in the journal Integrative Organism Biology over the past year. In an article titled “The potential for protection against shock of mammalian hair: an assessment of the bogey hypothesis of the evolution of the hairline of the human face,” scientists described how a series of practical experiments have shown that a beard softens blows by up to 37%.
Prize in the field entomology went to American scientists for the fact that they were able to prove that dichlorvos is an unusually effective way to fight cockroaches on submarines. A prize in the field transport went to scientists from Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Britain and the United States, who studied the safety of air transport of rhinos upside down.
According to the article “Pulmonary and metabolic effects of leg suspension versus lateral recumbency of immobilized black rhinos (Diceros Bicornis) caught with air darts,” both methods of transporting rhinos have approximately the same effect on animals. The findings of scientists have been highly appreciated by experts from African national parks and reserves, who increasingly have to transport rhinos from place to place.
For fat politicians, fragrant moviegoers and discarded gum
2021 Shnobel Prize Laureate in Economics Pavlo Blavatsky (bottom right)
Фото: Improbable Research / youtube
Prize in the field the economy received Pavlo Blavatsky, who discovered that on the level of corruption in the country can be judged by the fact how fat politicians are in the country… He shared his discovery in the article “Obesity of politicians and corruption in post-Soviet countries” published this year in the journal “Economics of Transition and Institutional Changes”. The researcher, using photographs of 299 ministers from all 15 former Soviet republics, determined using a computer the body mass index (BMI) of each of them.
As it turned out, the median BMI was “highly consistent with traditional measurements (level. – “B”) corruption ”, such as the indices of Transparency International, the World Bank, etc.
Thus, according to the researcher, “the physical characteristics of politicians, such as BMI, can be used as a secondary indicator of political corruption where primary indicators are not available, especially at the lowest local level.”
In turn, scientists from Germany, Great Britain, Cyprus, Austria, Greece and New Zealand received the Shnobel Prize for chemistry for practical proof that, sniffing the audience leaving the cinema, you can get a more or less clear idea of how much violence, sex, obscene language, antisocial behavior, etc. in the film they watched classification of films ”, it should at least seriously facilitate the work of bureaucrats deciding which category to assign a particular film, and as a maximum – create a new, based on scientific data and completely objective system of classification of films.
2021 Shnobel Prize Winners in Chemistry
Фото: Improbable Research / youtube
To a certain extent, antisocial behavior helped scientists from Spain and Iran, who became winners of the Shnobel Prize in ecology. They studied gum thrown on the sidewalk… Using genetic analysis to identify bacteria remaining on discarded gum pieces, they prepared the Discarded Gum Bacteria study. Specifically, they found that oral microbiota remaining on chewing gum, “characterized by the presence of … Streptococcus spp. or Corynebacterium spp., turns into a bacteriome after a few weeks … with the presence of Acinetobacter spp., Sphingomonas spp. and Pseudomonas spp. ” According to the study, its findings “have significant implications for a wide range of disciplines, including … bioremediation of used chewing gum residues.”
For pedestrians colliding and not colliding
2021 Shnobel Prize Winners in Physics
Фото: Improbable Research / youtube
Two studies at once, closely related in topic, attracted the attention of the organizers of the award. “Shnobel” by physics was awarded to scientists from Taiwan, the Netherlands, Italy and the United States for conducting a series of experiments in order to find out why pedestrians on the street do not constantly collide with each other… The results of the experiments were presented in Physics-Based Modeling and Information Representation of Pairwise Interaction Among Pedestrians. It was published in 2018, but only now caught the eye of the organizers of the award. Scientists, in particular, note that when moving “pedestrians constantly adjust their route, trying to maintain a mutually comfortable distance and avoid collisions.”
In turn, the Shnobel Prize in the field kinetics received scientists from Japan, Switzerland and Italy, who conducted experiments in order to find out why do pedestrians sometimes collide… Their work is titled “Mutual Apprehension Can Help Self-Organization in Crowds.” It was published in 2021 in the journal Scientific Progress. Experiments have proven, in particular, that both pedestrians who are distracted by something and those who are not distracted collide with each other. In addition, it was found that “evasive maneuvers are usually a collaborative process.”
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