Ig Nobels and science journalism - October 08, 2007
Last week saw the welcome return of the Ig Nobels – the annual prizes for silly sounding, salacious or just plain strange science. The official website is still suffering problems with traffic but you can read Nature’s personal account instead. The Guardian is running a slide show of the awards.
This year’s prizes give us an opportunity to settle a long running debate in the Nature office: who covers the most silly science. Using some highly arbitrary search terms and the giant LexisNexis database of news reports we have complied a list of which newspapers gave most coverage to ignoble research before it was officially Ig Nobel*.
Way out in front is the UK’s Express – self styled ‘world’s greatest newspaper’ – with eleven stories. In second place is another UK paper, The Guardian, with eight stories. North American sources pop up in a tied third place – with the US McClatchy-Tribune service and Canada’s National Post both showing six stories. Finally, a tied fifth place with an appropriate five stories each goes to 24 Hours and the Calgary Herald.
A strong showing for Canada, the UK firmly on top and our more serious / higher standard US colleagues left in the dust.
*Caveat: This research was done in a short time period using highly unscientific methods and would never be accepted in a peer reviewed journal of any standard. It would be foolish to assume this picked up every story written, however we think we are likely to have missed stories across the board, hence evening things out.
Image: Getty
