The Chronicle of Higher Education
Monday, October 7, 2002
Belly-Button Lint and Beer-Bubble Decay Are Among Subjects Studied by 2002 Ig Nobel Winners Karl Kruszelnicki of the University of Sydney surveyed more than 4,500 people and determined that "you're more likely to have BBL [belly-button lint] if you're male, older, hairy, and have an innie."
Arnd Leike of the University of Munich demonstrated that beer bubbles evaporate at a rate that follows the mathematical law of exponential decay.
These achievements -- along with a British study of the possible sexual arousal of ostriches in the presence of humans and a Japanese invention that translates dog barks into human language -- were honored last week as the 2002 Ig Nobel Prizes were presented in a ceremony at Harvard University.
The "Igs," as the 10-year-old awards are known, honor achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced," according to the Web site of the organization that presents them, the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
While the awards are partly in jest -- prizes this year included a set of wind-up, chattering teeth -- AIR insists that the winners and their achievements are not being judged as "good" or "bad." Its Web site notes more than once that "the winners have all done things that first make people laugh, then make them think," and it adds that about half of the 10 prizes each year "are awarded for things that most people would say are commendable - -- if perhaps goofy. The other half go for things that are, in some people's eyes, less commendable."
The Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, the Harvard Computer Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students were co-sponsors of the awards ceremony, held Thursday at Harvard's Sanders Theater.
The 2002 prizes and their honorees are as follow:
Biology: Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of the United Kingdom, for their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain."
Chemistry: Theo Gray of Wolfram Research, in Champaign, Ill., for gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic-table table.
Economics: The executives, corporate directors, and auditors of the Enron Corporation and nearly two dozen other American businesses -- including Adelphia Communications, Arthur Andersen LLP, Qwest Communications International Inc., Tyco International Ltd., and WorldCom Inc. -- as well as Bank of Commerce and Credit International (Pakistan), Gazprom (Russia), HIH Insurance (Australia), Lernaut & Hauspie (Belgium), and Maxwell Communications (Britain), for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.
Hygeine: Eduardo Segura, of Lavakan de Aste, in Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.
Interdisciplinary research: Karl Kruszelnicki of the University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly-button lint -- who gets it, when, what color, and how much.
Literature: Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada-Reno and David S. Kreiner of Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension."
Mathematics: K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University, India, for their analytical report "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."
Medicine: Chris McManus of University College London, for his excruciatingly balanced report, "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture."
Peace: Keita Sato, president of Takara Company; Matsumi Suzuki, president of Japan Acoustic Lab; and Norio Kogure, executive director of Kogure Veterinary Hospital, for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language-translation device.
Physics: Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical law of exponential decay.