Today – March 15, 2010 – was the start of the UK’s national science and engineering week. For the University of Portsmouth, that meant a presentation by the Ig Nobel tour (Twitter hash tag: #igport). It was filled with laughter, but got pretty serious several times too.
A few keywords: brassiere, gas mask, sword-swallowing, dating, smells, books, shopping, plutonium, pica, obsessions, violence, pregnant women, pandas, Georg Friedrich Händel
The Ig Nobel movement was launched in 1991. The prizes are for research that first makes you LAUGH and then makes you THINK. That’s the only criterion. There is no good and bad research within the Ig Nobel context.
Every year brings 6000 to 7000 new nominations. The prizes are awarded at Harvard, in a big show, and there is always a gaggle of “real” Nobel laureates around as well. The person who started and runs this is Marc Abrahams ( http://twitter.com/MarcAbrahams ) who is also editor of the associated magazine, called the Annals of Improbable Research (freely available online as pdf). Every issue includes a Teachers’ Guide.
The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry was for the Periodic Table table. Dr. Fiona Barclay from the group that created that table – a wooden table with four legs, like any regular table – told us today how she supplies schools with periodic tables that contain samples of the elements.
She discovered that many elements can be bought on eBay, which reminded me of the time someone contacted me with a considerable amount of europium for sale (nominal value a few hundred thousand pounds).
She eventually landed in a homeopathy shop in London where she asked “May I have some plutonium please?”. (You have to picture a pretty down-to-earth woman say this in a Scottish voice!) The woman behind the counter fetched the chemist who then asked “What is wrong with you?”.
That made me burst into a laugh.
Fiona showed us various afflictions for which plutonium is the homeopathic remedy; I think it included multiple personality disorder. The chemist’s next question was “What strength do you need?”. The preferred answer was not “The highest strength you have.”
She demonstrated a Geiger teller on the radium-containing hands of an old alarm clock and on the homeopathic plutonium sample that didn’t give off a single click. Although I don’t think she changed the Geiger teller’s sensitivity settings when she went from one to the other – which can be crucial in a real setting, but maybe it depends on the type of counter – I believe her. She drank the potion in front of us all. The plutonium, that is. 
Dr. Alan Collins of the University of Portsmouth then talked about dating. I don’t remember which Ig Nobel Prize he got and in what field, but his work was a combination of economy and psychology (see comments). He had analyzed personal ads in the Sunday Times and discovered that the older British men get, the younger they want their partner to be. The ones who place personal ads, that is.
British women who place ads in the Sunday Times start dropping their requirement for attractiveness in a male partner with ageing. Seems to me, that this may well be linked to the fact that those women, in contrast to the men, also increase the ideal age of that desired partner with their own age.
Also, money apparently makes it easier for women to require attractiveness in the desired male partner. The poor can’t afford to be picky.
(Frankly, I doubt that these age-related results will be very representative for dating in other countries. The UK has a baffling age hangup – when it comes to women – that I haven’t encountered anywhere else yet and for which I have no explanation. Also, a feminist might say that British men don’t seem particularly appreciative of women as human beings.)
Collins also looked at the results a man in California obtained when he placed a sign in front of his home, announcing that he was a 55-year old widower looking for a partner aged 40 to 60. He had 8000 responses, if I recall correctly. That makes me wonder what kind of street he was living on and in what sort of neighborhood!
On to the next speaker! Did you know that you can purchase genuine book smells – paper bouquet – to make up for the lack of odor of digital books? The sense of smell is our strongest sense; after one year, our odor memory is still 65% accurate. Dr. Matija Strlic of University College London explained to us that the smell of nice old books can be divided into the following four categories:
- vinegar-like due to acetic acid;
- vanilla-like due to various compounds;
- sweet but not vanilla-like due to other compounds;
- the smell of burned sugar due to furfural.
Several times, he mentioned that many of those compounds are noxious. (Will this lead to new research entitled “the library as a chemical hazard?”) He passed around some bottles with these compounds and not long after, the lecture theater started smelling of old books.
He briefly discussed that it may be useful for libraries to have electronic noses – perhaps as used in anti-terrorism sniffer systems? - that alert them when the paper in books deteriorates too much and preservation steps are in order. Bees, however, also have a good sense of smell and experiments with bees are next.
(Yes, that cover portrays the dog that went on Shackleton’s Antarctica expedition, and yes, that other cover shows the Zeppelin, and no, those have nothing to do with Ig Nobel prizes but the images are examples of old printed materials. Early 1930s.)
Next, we got to the sword-swallowing! Yay! I did not take pictures, as it felt strangely voyeuristic to do that, possibly because of the risk associated with sword swallowing. This – studying the medical side-effects of sword-swallowing – is the work for which Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe received the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine. In the past 100 to 150 years, there have been a little under 30 deaths associated with sword-swallowing and countless injuries.
The art of sword-swallowing is more than 4000 years old. There is a variety of reasons why people swallow swords, hedge clippers and similar items, one of which is simply to make money in a profession and another one is to preserve this art, which takes 3 to 7 years to learn. There aren’t that many sword-swallowers left in the world: 112 (if memory serves me right, which it usually does). Dan Meyer is one of them.
Dan punctured one of his lungs (ended up with pleurisy) when he had swallowed a number of swords and his gorgeous macaw perched on his shoulder (not during his presentation today) got up to some mischief. Dan turned his head. Bad move!
A word of warning to aspiring sword-swallowers:
Do not turn your head when you have one or more swords down your throat.
Dan also talked about pica, also covered in at least one episode of ER, the persistent ingestion of inedible objects such as knives, spoons or buttons. Pica can be caused by a nutritional deficiency (iron), but can also be associated with disorders like schizophrenia, developmental disorders or with traumas such as abuse.
Dan talked about the treatment of certain pica patients and possibly gave something of himself away when he later misspoke and said that such patients should be made to feel “like they matter” instead of ”that they matter”. This latter form of pica is similar to self-harming behavior like cutting.
Did you know that Georg Friedrich Händel apparently might never have become a musician if it weren’t for a knife eater in the German town of Halle who was sent to Händel’s dad for treatment? Apparently, there is a book on it, called “Händel and the famous knife eater of Halle”.
A word of warning to Ig Nobel presentation audiences: One of you may get picked to pull a loooong sword out of Dan’s throat.
The pièce de résistence many may have been waiting for was the brassiere that doubles as two gas masks. This invention does not actually sound that odd to me, once having collected a friend with gas mask from the airport, during the first Gulf War.
Dr. Elena Bodnar, currently director of the Trauma Risk Management Research Institute at the University of Chicago, but working as a doctor in Ukraine at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, found her one-year old son playing with her bra in those days, placing one cup over his face. That’s how the idea was born. She figured that if her one-year old son was able to figure out how to place this mask on his face, so could many others.
Examples of situations in which such masks could come in handy and for example greatly reduce panic are fires and dust storms like the recent one in Australia. It also prevents that someone needs to use at least one hand to cover nose and mouth.
The emergency bra will be on the market in two weeks. If you buy one, remember this: the first rule in an emergency situation is to look after yourself first, for the simple reason that it is the only way you will be able to help others, not if you are passed out on the floor.
Oh, and size does not matter. The only thing that is important is a tight fit. Some filter material is included in the bra, but apart from that it is a fairly normal bra for many women, and available in various sizes and colors.
The remainder of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize winners include one in the category veterinary medicine for investigating whether cows that have names give more milk than nameless cows. (Exploring Stock Managers’ Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production, Catherine Bertenshaw [Douglas] and Peter Rowlinson, Anthrozoos, vol. 22, no. 1, March 2009, pp. 59-69. DOI: 10.2752/175303708X390473.)
The Ig Nobel Peace Prize was for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full or an empty beer bottle. (Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull? Stephan A. Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael J. Thali and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 16, no. 3, April 2009, pp. 138-42. DOI:10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013.)
At the ceremony, he suddenly hit himself on the head with a beer bottle to the surprise of those present.
The 2009 chemistry prize was for Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila, Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M. Castano, 2008, arXiv:0806.1485. Also published as Reviews on Advanced Materials Science, vol. 22, no. 1, 2009, pp. 134-8.
The research that had me doubled over addressed why pregnant women don’t tip over. It made Nature. (Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins, Katherine K. Whitcome, Liza J. Shapiro & Daniel E. Lieberman, Nature, vol. 450, 1075-1078 (December 13, 2007). DOI:10.1038/nature06342.)
The literature prize was for Ireland’s police, the An Garda Siochana, for writing more than fifty traffic tickets to an offender whose name turned out to be Polish for "Driving License".
If you want to know where the giant pandas come in, what the other prizes in 2009 were, about prizes awarded in other years, or just browse the magazine, take a look at the Improbable Research web site.
Tags: Ig Nobel, igport, Improbable Research, prizes, research, Science
Hi there
I’m Prof Alan Collins, from Portsmouth. I’m just offering a correction for your excellent blog –
1. I didn’t win an IgNobel – but have apparently been an intermittent contender.
2. Re: Harley Cobb – he had 4000 not 8000 enquiries – he went on to interview 800 and date 81!
Cheers
Alan
Hi,
Thanks!
1. That explains why I couldn’t find you or your research on the Improbable research web site.
2. I confess I did wonder… Funnily enough, it may reveal that the number 8 is my favorite number! (I have two explanations for it. It’s symmetrical and I like the sound of the Dutch letter a and 8 is pronounced “acht” in Dutch.)
“…Also, a feminist might say that British men don’t seem particularly appreciative of women as human beings…” Please don’t lump all British males together in this regard. Many of my acquaintances are very appreciative of women as human beings. And some women are not as appreciative as they might be of men (but I won’t generalise).
I’ll ask the feminist how many British males she knows and I’ll check up on the progress of the decrease in the gender wage gap in Britain.
But don’t worry, I am from one of the least emancipated countries in the world myself – when you look at the job market, the percentage of female university professors, corporate directors and similar factors – and that is certainly not the “fault” of Dutch males. Things are rarely as black and white as they can seem, and most of these things are simply the result of historic developments. Chance.
I remember that a large international survey carried out among YOUNG men from all sorts of countries one or two years back revealed British men to be much more family-oriented than Dutch men, for example. I seem to remember that young Dutch men saw themselves much more as providers, not so much as participants or contributors.
I often see (and I am pleasantly amazed when I see) British men play with their children or walk with baby carriages – on their own! – which to my knowledge is still a very rare sight in the Netherlands. Babies, however, tend to be associated with young people, with younger generations. And it may place some emphasis on women as “baby producers”.
I’ll try to find that survey again. I learned about in a Dutch tweet; I think it was a major magazine that conducted it. It was very good, in any case.
But it doesn’t matter.
Still, I think it cannot be emphasized enough that women are not like little children that need to be kept sweet with trinkets and have no reasoning or decision-making capacities of their own.
Women are people too.
Sometimes, what appears to be sexism, turns out to be mere ageism:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/309/6954/573
Ageism is rife in Britain, found a study conducted in 2005, the year I emigrated to the UK:
http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/3DE4E64AB5874330A11C1AB7790587BC.asp
(Download the study:
http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/Documents/Ageism_Report.pdf)
Yes, Britain has a baffling attitude to age and I find that a much bigger cause for concern. I’d be interested in anyone’s input on the background for this ageism (to the extent that it offers clues for how to change this). Where on earth does it come from? I’ve wondered whether it might have something to do with wars, with the men being gone too long and families perhaps finding themselves unable to have (more) children after those wars.
It was a very odd experience to me to be lumped with 80-, 90- and 100-year-olds, to have people speak to me ve-ry clear-ly and loud-ly occasionally (and be treated as if I were senile, as well), not obtain good professional advice from opticians (why would such an old person still need good eyesight after all?), and to be warned to be careful when stepping off the bus…
(Largely, to be shut out from normal life, from developments in society?)
But I was only 44 when I moved to the UK…
In fact, I cannot rule out that much of the behavior that I experience as sexism in Britain is in fact ageism, but I do have the feeling that it applies to women much more than it applies to men.
Having said that, I think it is up to us (every person in Britain over the age of eh, 22) to keep hammering home that being over 22 does not equal being “ridiculous”.
A good example of this is an older woman who abseils from all sorts of buildings. She is in her 80s or 90s and very clear-minded. I have heard several radio interviews with her and she does not allow interviewers to treat her like she’s a silly cantankerous child. She completely ignores their chiding, addresses them at the level of a normal adult and for instance challenges them – no, simply asks them – to abseil with her.
I have heard the balance and tone in such an interview shift markedly.
But how do I do that in practice? In some shops, I am treated with an obvious lack of respect that suddenly changes dramatically when it becomes clear that I have a small business.
So the secret is … turnover? Do we – the over22s
– simply have to keep hammering the message home that we present a large chunk of society and hence a huge market and that it is not smart to treat us like we’re silly senile cantankerous children? Hammer home that we buy our own toys?
(I cannot believe that I am typing this while in my forties, and it makes me want to
LAUGH OUT LOUD!)
On September 10, 2009, Lord Heseltine hit out at this as well:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/09/11/lord-heseltine-hits-out-at-ageism-in-britain-s-society-91466-24661278/
We oldies are the ones that hold the real power.
The under22s are just that only very briefly.
And isn’t it us oldies who buy most of their toys, too?
This afternoon, I read an item in a Dutch chemistry journal in which some full professors (all male, of course) discussed the pains of having to retire at 65 (instead of 70, partly). I can’t resist showing you the picture that accompanied it.
On gender-based wage differences:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,682026,00.html
Both huge and increasing in the Netherlands and Germany at around 25% while smallest in Italy at around 5%.