Ig Nobels honor 'weird science'

— -- Dan Meyer wanted to thank the presenters of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes for honoring his work with a British radiologist examining the side effects of sword swallowing. To really make the point, he thanked them with a sword still in his throat.

The 17th annual Ig Nobel prizes, presented Thursday night at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre,. recognize research that makes people laugh and then think. This year?s prizes were awarded for scholarly efforts such as developing a way to extract vanilla from cow dung and studying what makes sheets wrinkle. Seven of the 10 winners, who hail from five continents, traveled to Harvard at their own expense to accept the awards, which were handed to them by genuine Nobel Laureates.

The ceremony was kept on track by an 8-year-old girl, known as "Miss Sweety Poo," who cut-off acceptance speeches that went over their alloted 60 seconds by repeatedly saying, "Please stop, I'm bored." Stage sweepers, including Nobel Laureate Roy Glauber, periodically removed paper airplanes that were launched by the audience. But this is all part of Ig Nobel tradition.

"(The first year) we all kept expecting some grown-up to come in and tell us to stop this and go on home," says award creator Marc Abrahams, the editor of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).

No Ig Nobel winners have gone on to win a Nobel prize yet, says Abrahams. But Glauber was a regular stage-sweeper at the annual ceremony for 10 years before he won his Nobel.

As for the side effects of sword swallowing, Meyer, of Antioch, Tenn., says, "Most sword swallowing injuries happen either after another smaller injury when the throat is tender and swollen, or while doing something out of the ordinary, like swallowing multiple swords." Meyer went a month without solid food after doing the latter in 2005. Meyer is not sure if talking with a sword in his throat increases the probability of injury.

The Ig Nobel for nutrition went to a concept that sounds like a restaurant marketing ploy: a bottomless bowl of soup.