----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 7:44
AM
Subject: Ig Nobel Prizes
TIPSters--
As some of you may know, my husband Marc Abrahams produces the Ig Nobel
Prize ceremony every year. The Igs go to achievements that first make people
laugh, and then make them think. We've had some excellent psychology-oriented
winners in the past, including
John
Trinkaus, of the
Zicklin School
of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and
publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed
him, such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak
facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians
wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage
of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end;
What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a
stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attach�
cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a
supermarket's express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike
the taste of Brussels sprouts. REFERENCE: 86 of Professor Trinkaus's
publications are listed in "
Trinkaus
-- An Informal Look," Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3,
May/Jun 2003.
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.]
Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada-Reno and David S.
Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report
"The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading
Comprehension." [ PUBLISHED IN: Reading Research and Instruction,
vol. 36, no. 3, 1997, pp. 217-23.]
This year's ceremony was last night, and I'm happily exhausted today. I
thought I would share the list of winners with you all. Their achievements
speak for themselves all too eloquently, but nevertheless might provide nice
fodder for a class discussion: how do we know what is really important, in
science or elsewhere? Why might something that sounds ridiculous not be? Is
something, in fact, important simply because it was published in a major
journal? How is scientific work in danger of being misinterpreted?
MEDICINE
Steven
Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of
Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country
Music on Suicide."
PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol. 71, no. 1,
September 1992, pp. 211-8.
PHYSICS
Ramesh
Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottowa, and Michael
Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for exploring
and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.
REFERENCE: "Coordination
Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," Ramesh
Balasubramaniam and Michael T. Turvey, Biological
Cybernetics, vol. 90, no. 3, March 2004, pp. 176-90.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural
Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the
scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat
food that's been dropped on the floor.
CHEMISTRY
The Coca-Cola
Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid
from the River
Thames into Dasani,
a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made
unavailable to consumers.
ENGINEERING
Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of
Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S.
Patent #4,022,227).
LITERATURE
The American Nudist Research
Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that
everyone can see it.
PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons
of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard
University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to
something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a man in a
gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas in Our
Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol. 28, Perception, 1999, pages
1059-74.
DEMO: <http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html>
ECONOMICS
The Vatican, for outsourcing
prayers to India.
PEACE
Daisuke Inoue of
Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for
people to learn to tolerate each other
BIOLOGY
Ben Wilson
of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of
Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the
Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus
Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of
Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently
communicate by farting.
REFERENCE: "Sounds
Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," Magnus Wahlberg and
H�kan Westerberg, Aquatic
Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5. "Pacific
and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds," Ben Wilson, Robert S.
Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology
Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97.
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