I was listening to a radio panel show on BBC Four Extra just yesterday that featured, amongst its guests, Marc Abrahams, the editor and co-founder of the "Annals of Improbable Research".
His organisation collect examples of real research from many fields, as depicted in the categories below, about anything and everything, from everywhere.
The overriding emphasis on the subject matter is that whilst at first it may make you laugh, and all of those listed below elicit that first response upon reading as well as "what the flip!", they then after a short while really make you think.
The contribution to the 30 minute broadcast by Marc Abrahams really captured my curiosity and I have spent some time on investigating the topics covered under the banner of Improbable Research.
Such is the fascinating range of information that I can see it as a very rich vein of source material for my Blog writings for many months to come.
The following were the declared winners of the special annual ceremony known as the Ig Nobel Prize Awards in 2015. The Awards have been going since 1991.
The actual web site for Improbable Research has a full listing of the documents and the individuals presenting the studies for those seeking provenance and authentication.
No, they are not collectively mad and they have the papers to prove it.
PHYSICS PRIZE — Patricia Yang [USA and TAIWAN], David Hu [USA and TAIWAN], and Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo [USA], for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).
LITERATURE PRIZE — Mark Dingemanse [THE NETHERLANDS, USA], Francisco Torreira [SPAIN, THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, USA, CANADA], and Nick J. Enfield [AUSTRALIA, THE NETHERLANDS], for discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language — and for not being completely sure why.
MANAGEMENT PRIZE — Gennaro Bernile [ITALY, SINGAPORE, USA], Vineet Bhagwat [USA, INDIA], and P. Raghavendra Rau [UK, INDIA, FRANCE, LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY, JAPAN], for discovering that many business leaders developed during childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that — for them — had no dire personal consequences.
ECONOMICS PRIZE — The Bangkok Metropolitan Police [THAILAND], for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.
MATHEMATICS PRIZE — Elisabeth Oberzaucher [AUSTRIA, GERMANY, UK] and Karl Grammer [AUSTRIA, GERMANY], for trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children.
BIOLOGY PRIZE — Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez [CHILE], José Iriarte-Díaz [CHILE, USA], for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.
PHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two individuals: Justin Schmidt [USA, CANADA], for painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and to Michael L. Smith [PANAMA, US, UK, THE NETHERLANDS], for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).
It is true that the initial reaction is to laugh followed by a gaping sense of, well, good old ignorance.
No comments:
Post a Comment