An annual tradition here at In Compliance Magazine, we’re pleased to announce the winners of the 33rd First Annual (not a typo!) Ig Nobel Prizes.
This year’s awards ceremony was held virtually on September 14th and live streamed globally. The 10 new Ig Nobel Prize award winners include:
- For literature, a team of scholars from France, the UK, Finland, and Malaysia for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many (wait, there’s more!), many, many, many times (whew!);
- For mechanical engineering, researchers in India, China, Malaysia, and the U.S. for reanimating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools;
- For chemistry and geology, researchers from Poland and the UK for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks (ugh!):
- For communications, a team of researchers from Argentina, Spain, Columbia, Chile, China, and the U.S. for their study of the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward;
- For nutrition, a pair of researchers from Japan for their experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food (yum!);
- For education, researchers from Hong Kong, China, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland, Japan, and the U.S. for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students; and (finally!),
- For physics, researchers from Spain, Galicia, Switzerland, France, and the UK for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.
If you’ve never heard of the Ig Nobel Prizes, they are not to be confused with the annual Nobel Prizes typically announced is Oslo, Norway in early October. Instead, the Ig Nobel Prizes “honor achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.”
