{"id":4722,"date":"2010-10-06T15:30:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T14:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=4722"},"modified":"2010-10-08T13:50:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T12:50:04","slug":"elizabeth-loder-on-the-best-thing-about-the-ig-nobel-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2010\/10\/06\/elizabeth-loder-on-the-best-thing-about-the-ig-nobel-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Loder on the best thing about the Ig Nobel awards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/e_loder.jpg\" alt=\"Elizabeth Loder\" width=\"160\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>It really <em>was <\/em>a dark and stormy night as I joined several hundred other geeks and nerds who ignored the remnants of tropical storm Nicole on September 30. We braved high wind gusts in order to attend the<a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/improbable.com\/ig\/winners\/\" target=\"_blank\"> 20th First Annual Ig Nobel Awards in Memorial Hall on the Harvard campus<\/a>.\u00a0 The BMJ hired a proper journalist to cover the event, which leaves me free to focus on the highlights.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThings were in full swing when I arrived. A local group of doctors known as the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble was in the midst of an accordion concert. The MIT Press was making the most of an opportunity to hawk an assembly of books that all seemed to have the words \u201cgeek\u201d and \u201cnerd\u201d in their titles. Last year\u2019s winner of the Public Health Prize had succumbed to temptation and gone corporate. Underneath <a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.waymarking.com\/waymarks\/WM877Z_Memorial_Hall_Harvard_University_Cambridge_MA\" target=\"_blank\">the tablets inscribed with the names of Harvard students who had \u201claid down their lives in the war for the preservation of the Union\u201d<\/a> fiery red \u201c<a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ebbra.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">emergency bras<\/a>\u201d were on sale.\u00a0 In case you missed the press coverage last year, in an emergency the bra can be converted into two face masks: one for the wearer and one for a \u201cneedy bystander.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The prize committee showed its usual combination of humour and ingenuity in coming up with the list of winners. The <a title=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;_udi=B6V5W-4KXWJYK-1&amp;_user=10&amp;_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2007&amp;_rdoc=1&amp;_fmt=high&amp;_orig=search&amp;_origin=search&amp;_sort=d&amp;_docanchor=&amp;view=c&amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;_version=1&amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;_userid=10&amp;md5=57db90998650da996b825a14a491cf65&amp;searchtype=a\" target=\"_blank\">medicine award went to two Dutch doctors \u201cfor discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Attention to the symptoms of dyspnea is modulated by the positive or negative \u201cemotional valence\u201d of a situation, they suggested, although it occurred to me that the catecholamine release prompted by a scary ride might also make a difference.<br \/>\nThe Peace Prize had some medical relevance. Richard Stephens and colleagues were honoured for showing that swearing decreases pain perception \u2013 unless, that is, <a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;_udi=B6V5W-4KXWJYK-1&amp;_user=10&amp;_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2007&amp;_rdoc=1&amp;_fmt=high&amp;_orig=search&amp;_origin=search&amp;_sort=d&amp;_docanchor=&amp;view=c&amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;_version=1&amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;_userid=10&amp;md5=57db90998650da996b825a14a491cf65&amp;searchtype=a\" target=\"_blank\">you are a male with a tendency to catastrophise<\/a>.\u00a0 Manuel Barbeito and colleagues bagged the Public Health Prize for showing that<a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC547091\/?tool=pubmed\" target=\"_blank\"> bearded men in a laboratory are hazards to their \u201cfamily and friends\u201d because of the micro-organisms they might bring home in their beards<\/a>.\u00a0 As a commentator pointed out, a shortcoming of the work was its failure to consider whether bearded women pose a similar hazard. I\u2019m sure the editors of the journal <em>Applied Microbiology<\/em>, where the work was published, are suitably embarrassed that this oversight was not detected during their peer review process.<\/p>\n<p>The most admirable element of the whole Ig Nobel event is not its mockery of the real Nobel awards, although that is certainly enjoyable. No, the best thing is the way the organisers keep the honorees from actually banging on for too long about their work. The acceptance speeches are mercifully brief. In a tradition worth emulating whenever awards are given, winners are limited to a one minute speech. If they exceed their time they are hounded off the stage by a small girl known as<a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/improbable.com\/2009\/08\/28\/miss-sweetie-poo-the-next-generation\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Miss Sweetie Poo<\/a>. She shouts, \u201cPlease stop, I\u2019m bored!\u201d until the transgressor leaves the podium.\u00a0 It\u2019s remarkably effective. This year Miss Sweetie Poo only had to make one appearance, when the winners of the biology prize \u2013 for the use of a remote controlled helicopter to collect whale snot \u2013 warmed too much to their topic. Depending upon the context, a minute can be a long time. I\u2019m sure I was not the only audience member who was relieved to see Miss Sweetie Poo leave her seat onstage and skip over to the podium.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t been to previous Ig Nobel ceremonies, but it may be that in their 20th year the festivities are a bit overripe. The strict time limits applied to acceptance speeches aren\u2019t enforced for the musical interludes or other entertainment. Some of those things were very funny and some were, well, lame and sophomoric. But in the world of college humour, which this is, that\u2019s a compliment, and the Ig Nobels were mostly great fun. Along with Miss Sweetie Poo a recurring Ig Nobel joke is that real Nobel laureates take part in the ceremonies. One, <a title=\"external web page\" href=\"http:\/\/improbable.com\/ig\/2010\/ignitaries\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">physics laureate Roy Glauber, has \u201chumbly\u201d swept paper airplanes from the stage for many years<\/a>.\u00a0 It was mostly Physics laureates on stage. Perhaps that shows physicists tend to have a good sense of humour, or maybe it shows they are confident enough in their achievements not to mind a harmless bit of satire. All I know is that I don\u2019t expect to see Peace laureate Al Gore on stage at the Ig Nobels anytime soon. That would be funny on too many levels.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Elizabeth Loder<\/strong> is the BMJ\u2019s US based clinical epidemiology editor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It really was a dark and stormy night as I joined several hundred other geeks and nerds who ignored the remnants of tropical storm Nicole on September 30. We braved [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2010\/10\/06\/elizabeth-loder-on-the-best-thing-about-the-ig-nobel-awards\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-at-large"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Elizabeth Loder on the best thing about the Ig Nobel awards - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2010\/10\/06\/elizabeth-loder-on-the-best-thing-about-the-ig-nobel-awards\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elizabeth Loder on the best thing about the Ig Nobel awards - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It really was a dark and stormy night as I joined several hundred other geeks and nerds who ignored the remnants of tropical storm Nicole on September 30. 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