Improbable Research

October 2, 1999
 

Why dunkin' doc is a prize boffin

By Lisa Pritchard
 
 

SOME scientists help to change the world. Some don't.     And it was those whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced" who received dubious plaudits last night in the United States.      The "winners" of the spoof Ig Nobel Prize included the West's very own biscuit boffin, Dr Len Fisher, of the University of Bristol.     He picked up the Ig Nobel prize for physics for his groundbreaking research into biscuit-dunking - and it suited him down to a T.     Later today, Dr Fisher is also due to deliver a spoof lecture on his work - the discovery of a formula for dunking that avoids wet chunks dropping into your cuppa - at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     Dr Fisher, who lives at Nunney, near Frome, said: "It is simply scientists pulling each others' legs and I have been invited to deliver my famous lecture on the physics of biscuit-dunking at the MIT.     "At the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony I am delivering the 32nd Heisenberg Certainty lecture. That is a joke too - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is something in physics that tells us we can't measure everything at once."     His ten fellow winners included Dr Arvid Vatle, of Norway, who carefully collected, classified and contemplated the kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting samples of urine. His dedication scooped him the Ig Nobel prize for medicine.     Dr Fisher says his research shows that chocolate digestives are the biscuits to use if you want the best dunking qualities.