Ig Nobel Prizes: Genius and...Goofballs

Oct. 5, 2009 — -- This week's Nobel Prizes will be the most prestigious awards given to scientists this year. Last week's Ig Nobel Prizes, on the other hand, were indisputably the funniest. They spotlighted scientists whose work walks the fine line between silly and significant -- a distinction that isn't always obvious.

This year's winners included Donald Unger, a doctor who received the Medicine Prize for cracking the knuckles of his left hand -- but not his right -- for sixty years to see if the habit contributes to arthritis (it didn't). The Chemistry Prize recognized a technique for growing diamonds from tequila, while the Physics Prize highlighted a study about why pregnant women don't fall over that was published in Nature, one of the most prestigious journals in the scientific community.

The Ig Nobels are given out by Improbable Research, an organization that publicizes "research that makes people laugh and then think," according to its website. The first prizes in 1991 featured a sperm bank that only accepts donations from Nobel Prize winners and studies about intelligent water and flatulence.

Silly-sounding science as often branded as frivolous and sometimes criticized as a waste of taxpayer money. In last year's presidential race, for example, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attacked spending money on a particular scientific study. "These dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good," she said in an October 24 speech in Pittsburgh. "Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France."

The problem with this perspective, said Marc Abrahams, originator of the Ig Nobels, is that important science often sounds strange. Palin's fruit flies, for example, are pests that, according to Congressman Mike Thompson of California, pose a large threat to the U.S. olive industry. Fruit flies are also an essential genetic tool used to understand and develop treatments for medical conditions ranging from Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's disease to aging and diabetes.