THE NOBEL PRIZES

    It is Nobel Prize time and there are many related news stories to be found. One of the latest indicates that President Trump will break with tradition and not invite to the White House the eight American laureates. I am sure everyone involved is relieved.

    Naturally given that the Nobel Prizes are much in the news I choose to focus on the Ig Nobel ones. If it is as dreary where you are as it is here, or if you failed to win a Nobel, then you might need a little humour.

The Ig Nobel Prizes

    

    I will keep this short. You probably know about Wikipedia where you can go straight away to learn about both the Nobels and the Igs. You rely on me for more and better information so here is where you should go to learn about the origin of the Ig Nobel Prizes - The Annals of Improbable Research. After you stop laughing and again start feeling depressed, move on to The Journal of Irreproducible Results: The Science Humor Magazine which will make you “Laugh!, “Chortle!” and “Guffaw!”

Post Script:

   This bonus information is only available to subscribers; the rest of you are not allowed to read it.

   A while back I read Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, by Robert R. Provine. Don’t be too dismissive. It is published by Harvard University Press. In it, he gives a good explanation of what the Ig Nobel prizes are all about and provides two examples. One of them even has some Canadian content which allows me to meet the CRTC quota.

About the IP, Provine says (p.235): “The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are not a dishonor, but typically a good-humored recognition of the unusual, imaginative, and funny in science, medicine and technology.”

p. 130-131 of Curious Behavior... in the Chapter on “Hiccupping”
In discussing a potential cure for hiccupping he notes:
“The most creative cure is offered by a physician, Dr. Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, in a memorable paper in the Annals of Emergency Medicine: “Termination of Intractable Hiccups by Digital Rectal Massage”. “The approach of a rubber-gloved Dr. Fesmire would disrupt any number of physiological patterns. His discovery earned him the gratitude of thankful patients and a 2006 Ig Nobel Prize.”

A Canadian example is found in the chapter on “Farting and Belching”, on p. 197:

“Having made the case that farting could provide a novel though limited channel of communication, we can question whether any animals actually exploit this unlikely aural niche. So far, signaling by fart is reported only in certain herring. The breakthrough research appears in a paper cryptically titled “Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds.” The work earned Ben Wilson and colleagues at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre in British Columbia, Canada, the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in biology. The scientists became curious about the origin of strange rasping noises produced at night by captive herring under observation in a tank, and discovered that they were fish farts. The fish gulp air at the surface, store it in their swim bladder, and release it from a duct in their anus, producing a high-frequency burst up to 22,000Hz. (Human hearing ranges from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.) Their next insight was that the farts are signals that may bring fish together and assist in evading predators. But signaling may have a price: predators such as killer whales may also be listening to flatulent herring and home in on the signal. The herring fart by night, but not by day, when they rely on visual instead of auditory information.”

PS:
If you are old enough you may remember the “Order of the Golden Fleece” and Senator Proxmire. The Golden Fleece Awards were a little different in that they typically ridiculed seemingly ludicrous studies that received government funding. Often such subjects yield useful results.