http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-435587,00.html

October 04, 2002 

Oddball scientist wins an Ig Nobel
By Patrick Kidd


IT IS one thing to wonder why ancient sculptors 
often gave figures one testicle bigger than 
another. It is quite another to spend months 
researching it. 

But that is what Chris McManus of University 
College London did, and now he has been honoured 
for his labours. 

He was one of two British scientists awarded a 
so-called Ig Nobel prize by The Annals of 
Improbable Research, an American science 
magazine, for the world's wackiest research 
projects. The Igs, as they are known, were 
presented at a Harvard University theatre last 
night. 

Professor McManus, who was rewarded for his 
study of scrotal symmetry, said: "I looked at 
over 100 classical nudes in art galleries in 
Italy and found that in the main they made the 
right testicle hang higher, but smaller. They 
only got this half right: the right testicle is 
actually larger in real life. 

"I suggested that this mistake was due to the 
Greeks believing that testicles acted as weights 
to tension the body, and therefore if one 
testicle hangs lower then it must be because it 
is heavier. The sculptors put theory before 
reality. 

"I suppose I must have been quite a sight in 
these galleries, going up to the statues, 
eyeballing their gonads and making detailed 
notes." 

Charles Paxton, from St Andrews University, 
collected the biology prize for his report on 
the "courtship behaviour of ostriches towards 
humans under farming conditions in Britain".