It’s once again time to celebrate the Ig Nobel Prizes, the awards for “achievements that make people laugh, then think”. On the 17th of September, ten prizes were awarded in an online ceremony – here’s who won, and why.
Acoustics – Stephan Reber, Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Janisch, Mark Robertson & Tecumseh Fitch
Inhaling helium to make your voice sound funny is a common party activity. These five scientists took that concept in a bizarre new direction with their experiments on alligators.
Crocodilians, including alligators, ‘speak’ more than most reptiles. This is especially true during the mating season, when both males and females will make loud bellows to each other. We’re not exactly sure why, though, which is what these scientists are hoping to find out.
The researchers were wondering whether the alligators use particular types of noises called ‘formants’ to show off how big they are. Formants are created when noises from vocal cords resonate in the body; this means they sound different depending on the animal’s size.
To see if crocodilians create formants, the researchers made a Chinese alligator bellow while breathing helium. This caused the formants to sound higher, like when we inhale party balloons. By analysing these sounds, they proved that alligators do ‘speak’ using formants, quite possibly to advertise their size.
Psychology – Miranda Giacomin & Nicholas Rule
Have you ever had a bad feeling about someone you’ve only just met? Did you end up being right about them? We are able to judge someone’s personality from their appearance alone, and the key is in the eyebrows.
Narcissists are people who think and act in a vain, self-centred way. Previous studies have shown that you can tell whether someone is narcissistic by looking at their face, but Miranda and Nicholas wanted to learn more.
They gave participants a psychological test and took their photo. They then showed these photos to other people and got them to judge the participants’ personalities. By cutting out various facial features, the pair narrowed it down until they realised that a person’s eyebrows are the biggest giveaway to narcissism.
Narcissists have ‘distinct’ eyebrows, but it’s unclear why. They are more likely to style their eyebrows than other people, but it’s also possible that it works the other way. Maybe being naturally attractive helps develop a narcissistic personality.
Peace – The governments of India and Pakistan
The countries of India and Pakistan have been in conflict ever since they achieved independence from Britain in 1947. The nations have clashed in wars, terrorist attacks, and recently, knock-and-runs.
In 2018, reports were made by both countries that their diplomats had been repeatedly harassed by those of the other nation. Indian and Pakistani officials complained that their doorbells had been rung at various hours in the middle of the night. By the time they’d gone to answer the door, the culprit had run away.
The diplomats also reported other, less childish forms of harassment. Electricity and water supplies have been cut off, officials have been aggressively followed and attacked, and their children have been intimidated. These accusations, and the broader India-Pakistan conflict, are serious issues, which makes the use of knocking-and-running even more bizarre than it initially seems.
Physics – Ivan Maksymov & Andriy Pototsky
Doing bizarre things to animals is a common trend with the Ig Nobel prizes. Otherwise-standard scientific experiments become instantly more interesting when performed on a living thing. Take this prize, for example, awarded for calculating vibrations in a live earthworm.
Faraday waves are a type of standing wave; instead of moving in a direction, they bob up and down in one position. These waves are created when a layer of liquid is put on a solid surface, which then quickly vibrates up and down.
Like most animals, earthworms are mostly made of water, but they also have no skeleton keeping them in a particular shape. This means that, if you put one on a vibrating surface, different parts of its body will be squashed as Faraday waves are created. Ivan and Andriy tested this on several species of earthworm and measured exactly what shapes are formed at different speeds of vibration, before releasing the unharmed worms back into the soil.
Economics – Christopher Watkins, Juan David Leongómez, Jeanne Bovet, Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz, Max Korbmacher, Marco Antônio Corrêa Varella, Ana Maria Fernandez, Danielle Wagstaff & Samuela Bolgan
Why do couples kiss each other? I’m assuming your first answers weren’t ‘wealth inequality’ or ‘to check each others’ health’, but those are the possibilities this group of researchers decided to test in their 2019 study.
It has been suggested by some scientists that, much like how animals will use smell to judge potential mates, kissing could help determine the health of a partner. Watkins and his team reasoned that if this was the case, kissing would be more useful (so more common) in poorer countries with worse healthcare.
They surveyed over three thousand participants from 13 countries across the globe, to see if there was a link between national wealth and kissing habits. The results showed that the deciding factor wasn’t national wealth in itself – it was wealth inequality. The greater the difference between rich and poor in a country, the more couples kissed. This confirmed one of the team’s theories, although several others were left unanswered by the study.
Management – Xi Guang-An, Mo Tian-Xiang, Yang Kang-Sheng, Yang Guang-Sheng & Ling Xian-Si
Subcontracting is a standard business practice in many fields, but murder isn’t generally one of them. This particular case is a good example of why not, after a hired hitman hired a hitman, who hired a hitman, who hired a hitman, who hired a hitman, who didn’t do the job.
In 2013, a Chinese businessman named Tan Youhui paid Xi Guang-An two million yuan to kill a competitor named Wei. Xi Guan-An then went to Mo Tian-Xiang and offered him one million yuan to commit the murder instead. Mo Tian-Xiang then hired Yang Kang-Sheng, who hired Yang Guang-Sheng, who finally hired Ling Xian-Si, with the payment getting smaller at each step.
Ling Xian-Si contacted Wei and arranged to meet. However, instead of killing him, the hitman told Wei about the plot. The pair then faked photographs ‘proving’ the job had been completed. The police were later contacted, with Tan Youhui and his five hitmen finally sentenced to prison in October last year.
Entomology – Richard Vetter
Richard Vetter worked for years as an entomologist (an insect scientist). As he did his research, he noticed something strange about some of his co-workers; even though they spent all their lives around insects, they were terrified by spiders.
He surveyed forty-one entomologists with negative feelings towards spiders to try and figure out what caused this. His questions investigated why spiders seem so scary, and whether the researchers had past experiences that might have contributed.
Surprisingly, many of the most-hated features of spiders could also apply to insects; these include how they appear unexpectedly, move fast, bite and have many legs. The entomologists seem to be aware of these contradictions, but that hasn’t helped them control their fear.
The paradox can be partially explained by the fact that phobias generally form in early childhood, long before many of the entomologists became interested in insects. One participant in the study offered another, simpler explanation – “maggots don’t sneak up on you and jump in your hair”.
Medicine – Nienke Vulink, Damiaan Denys & Arnoud van Loon
Diagnosing mental disorders is a complicated task, especially for those that haven’t been officially defined. These three psychiatrists have spent the past several years doing research into a previously-unrecognised yet not-uncommon condition – misophonia.
The word ‘misophonia’ means ‘hate of sound’ in Greek. Sufferers of this condition experience strong negative emotions whenever they hear particular noises. The most common triggers are the sounds made by other people as they eat or breathe.
When someone with misophonia hears one of these noises they become irritated or disgusted, but this quickly turns to anger. It isn’t uncommon for sufferers to become aggressive, either verbally or physically, towards the person making the noise, who often doesn’t even realise what they’re doing.
In 2013, Nienke and Damiaan published the first scientific report of misophonia, after working with several affected patients. Their analysis showed differences between this and all known mental disorders, arguing that it should be recognised as a new, separate condition.
Medical Education – Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Narendra Modi, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Alexander Lukashenko, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin & Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow
I have a couple of rules for what stories I write for this blog. Rule One: only do articles on topics I find interesting. Rule Two: make no mention of the 
pandemic that has otherwise dominated the 2020 news cycle. However, these awards have conspired against me with this particular prize.
The official website announces that these nine world leaders have won “for using the viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can”. While few politicians’ responses to have been universally praised, these recipients, each in their own way, have done more than most to anger the scientific community.
These aren’t the first politicians to be awarded an Ig ironically; this isn’t even the first such ‘honour’ for Alexander Lukashenko. In 2013 he received the Peace Prize for making applauding illegal, along with the Belarus State Police, who arrested a one-armed man for the crime.
Materials Science – Metin Eren, Michelle Bebber, James Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson & Mary Ann Raghanti
There is a tale, featured in several books and documentaries, that an Inuit man used a knife made out of his own frozen poo to kill and butcher a dog. Widely spread as an example of the resourcefulness of indigenous people, these scientists proved that this event couldn’t have happened.
The story goes that the man’s family took all his tools, in an effort to move him into a settlement. However, in he middle of a windstorm he shaped and froze his poo into a knife, which he used to kill a dog. He then used its body to create a sled, and “disappeared into the darkness”.
The researchers tested this tale by freezing and shaping their own poo into knives, which they used to try and cut animal hide. Despite changing details to give the experiment “the best possible chance to succeed”, the frozen blades just melted before they could cut through even the softest animal tissue, making the man’s supposed actions essentially impossible.
Lachlan Writes Science 