iG Nobel: and the winners of the parody scientific ceremony are…

On September 12th, the 34th edition of the Venerables was held Ig Nobel Prize at the famous MIT in Cambridge. For this return to the physical format with an audience after four online editions due to the pandemic, the ceremony parodying the Nobel Prizes (Ig Nobel being a play on words in English with the word “ignoble”) rewarded several individuals or groups of individuals in 10 categories. To learn more (if not everything) about the Ig Nobel, we advise you first to watch this episode of the excellent YouTube channel e-penser 2.0 (from 2:48):

To hope to win, it was therefore necessary to fulfil several conditions: to respect the central adage of the ceremony, namely to make the public laugh, then think, but also to be in line with this year's theme around Murphy's law (“anything that can go wrong will go wrong”). Beyond entertaining, the Ig Nobel Prizes are an opportunity to highlight that even research that seems unusual or absurd can provide useful knowledge to humanity.

Here are this year's winners, and you're probably not ready…

The winners of the 34th edition of the Ig Nobel Prizes

• Anatomy Prize A group from France and Chile studied whether the hair of most people in the Northern Hemisphere curls in the same direction (clockwise or counterclockwise) as the hair of most people in the Southern Hemisphere. A cutting-edge topic…
• Biology Prize A pair of Americans have discovered — hold on to your hats — when and how a cow gives milk when a cat is on its back and paper bags are regularly exploded next to it. Filled with popcorn?
• Botany Prize A group has found evidence that some plants mimic the shape of plastic plants placed next to them. Enough to rightfully earn this laurel.
• Chemistry Prize A group from France and the Netherlands used chromatography to separate drunken worms from sober worms. This is graveyardDoctor?
• Demographics Award Saul Justin Newman has discovered that many of the people famous for living the longest actually lived in places where birth and death records were poorly kept. So be it…
• Medicine Prize Awarded to Europeans who discovered that counterfeit drugs that cause painful side effects can be more effective in patients than counterfeit drugs that do not cause painful side effects. Administered in a dish, it is beautiful, otherwise.
• Peace Prize Awarded to American BF Skinner for his experiments investigating the possibility of guiding missiles using live pigeons. Apparently the doves didn't want to cooperate…
• Physiology Prize Kudos to Japanese and American people for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anuses. fake news ? No way!
• Physics Prize American James C. Liao has managed to demonstrate the swimming abilities of a… dead trout. No, nothing to do with politicians…
• Probability price About fifty European researchers, after a series of 350,757 throws, have confirmed that a thrown coin is more likely to land on the side from which it started to twist. We are in good shape.

To go further (always further)

The full papers on each of these scientific advances can be found in the X thread (ex-Twitter) below

To find the replay from the 34th Ig Nobel ceremony in video, it happens below: