The Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last Thursday night in a ceremony at Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The audience often threw paper airplanes at the stage—but not insultingly.
Presented every year since 1991, the awards parody the Nobel prizes and aim to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The event achieved both objectives in an absurd, smart romp that showed that scientific achievement can be as silly as hoped for in the fourth grade.
The ceremony was kicked off by the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, a four-intellectual band composed of three accordionists and a violinist. They performed several songs (such as the theme to Carmen) while clad in lab coats. Then Dan Meyer, a multiple-world-record-holding sword swallower and past Ig Nobel Prize winner, gulped razor-sharp steel to wild approbation from the audience.
Meyer won the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007 after co-writing a paper on sword swallowing and its side effects. Said Meyer, “In the 4000 years sword swallowing had existed, no one had done any sort of comprehensive medical study.” Meyer’s sword swallowing has become an Ig Nobel Ceremony tradition since he won the award.
The ceremony is chock-full of tradition. Attending is akin to watching a cult movie. There are pre-established jokes that are funny even for audience members that are not quite in on them, and audience participation and appreciation is heightened. Another tradition is “Miss Sweetie Poo,” an adorable eight-year-old who cuts winners’ speeches off if they run too long by repeatedly screaming, “Please stop! I’m bored!” Paper airplanes are customarily tossed at the stage, but in recent years the audience is asked to only do so at two specific times during the night, for the sake of safety and sanity. The ensuing flurry that entailed during those two moments was fleeting, fluttering madness.
The night couldn’t truly begin until the grandmotherly Jean Berko Gleason delivered the riveting “Welcome, welcome” speech. The speech involves Gleason milking the drama, slowly examining her notes, cocking an eyebrow in concentration, and examining her notes again before addressing the crowd: “Welcome…welcome.”
The theme this year was Chemistry (past themes include Bacteria, Infinity, and Chicken), and the prize took the form of a miniature Periodic Table table. The coveted prize in the field of Chemistry was won by a team of Japanese scientists for “determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi to awaken sleeping people in case of fire or another emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.”
Dr. Makoto Imai, an assistant professor at Shiga University of Medical Science, led the team. “We tried a rotten egg smell, but subjects didn’t wake up,” said Imai. “The stinging sensation is key.” The sting only lasts a few moments, but the sensation is intense—like thrusting your eyes into a room full of chopped onions.
“Out of 50 subjects, only one was not woken by the alarm,” said Imai. “We couldn’t figure out why. He had a broken nose, but a fully functional sense of smell.”
Following the awarding of the Chemistry prize, the first act of the brand new mini-opera Chemist in a Coffeeshop was performed. The rest of the acts were scattered throughout the evening. Though there were moments of cleverness linking java to chemistry, the opera often dragged and soon became repetitive; the most entertaining song (to the tune of “The Can-Can”) was admitted to be a repeat from a previous year. The singers sang well, and the act seemed well rehearsed, but the final product seemed more like a cup of cream with a drop of joe than the other way around. Sadly, the best part of the whole thing was that it solemnly reminded me of coffee-connoisseur-cum-chemist Gale from Breaking Bad.
The opera was a bit of a flop, but audience couldn’t hold in their laughter when the winner of the prize in Medicine was announced. A group of scientists from around the globe found that “people make better decisions about some kinds of things—but worse decisions about other kinds of things– when they have a strong urge to urinate.” For instance, the scientists found that people are more patient with money when they have to urinate. Shopaholic tendencies? Chug some water before heading to Newbury Street.
One of my personal favorite moments of the night came when the winners gave their speech. When Miss Sweetie Poo approached and began to yell, they responded in unison: “When you gotta go, you gotta go!” If you imagined Jeff Goldblum when you read that, I applaud you.
Several past winners attended the show and briefly addressed the crowd, including Deborah Anderson, who won for studying the spermicidal capabilities of Coca-Cola. “Cherry Coke is not effective. Be careful!” said Anderson. Past winners Don and Nancy Featherstone, who invented the plastic lawn flamingo, were also in attendance. The Featherstones wore matching flamingo-decorated apparel.
Next came the 24/7 lectures, in which lecturers have 24 seconds to technically describe their current research, and afterwards must describe their findings in seven words that any anyone could understand. Kate Clancy, a Harvard-grad anthropologist, spoke about her vaginal pH research, afterwards explaining, “Leave your acidic vagina alone. Don’t douche.” She offered another alternate seven words: “Vaginas should smell like vaginas, not flowers.” Tell that to Georgia O’Keeffe.
The most sarcastic prize given was certainly the one in Math. The prize was given to several people who have claimed to calculate the day the world will end, including Harold Camping, for “teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.” None of the winners attended the ceremony.
YouTube sensation Arturas Zuokas, a Lithuanian mayor, won the Peace prize for “demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over in an armored tank.
“Everyone encounters illegally parked cars and thinks the same thing, Zuokas said. “I was just the first person to do it.” Zuokas wanted to protect bikers—cars had been parked in bike lanes—and send a strong message. It worked. “Bike drivers feel better now that they feel they have equal rights,” he said. Zuokas has initiated a new system in which citizens can mark illegally parked cars with stickers. Citizens of Allston have a slightly different system.
The ceremony closed with Gleason’s enthralling “Goodbye, Goodbye” speech.
All in all, the ceremony made me feel a part of an intimate community. I’m not a scientific person, but I felt the chemistry. As I stepped out of Sanders Theater into the drizzle, I knew I very much wanted to return to see the show again next year. Then again, I also had to urinate.
Learn more about the Ig Nobel Prizes here.
