November 1, 1999
Indications
by Todd Zwillich
Excellence in Science
Where else but in this column would a critical study of urine specimen cups and the invention of an inti-fidelity spray for men win high praise instead of ignominy? At the Ig Nobel Prizes, of course, which went off for the ninth straight year last month at Harvard University. The medicine prize went to Dr. Arvid Vatle of Norway for classifying the recepticles his patients chose for their urine samples. The prize for chemistry went to Japan's takeshi Makino for a spray that turns bright green in teh presence of trace semen inmen's underwear. Both of the honorees and many others flew to Cambridge to accept their awards and even had them handed over by real Nobel laureates, according to Ig tradition, organizer Marc Abrahams said.