The Ig Nobel awards can easily be dismissed as prizes for laughable research (and by “laughable” I mean that in the negative sense), but in this week’s Nature, a news article

about one of the prize winners might convince you that the awards recognize pretty thoughtful, though quirky, research.

The article focuses on ophthalmologist Ivan Schwab, of the University of California, Davis and the late Philip May of UCLA who won one of the prizes for work on why woodpeckers, which pound their heads against trees 20 times a second, don’t sustain neurological damage or headaches. On the surface, it may sound like weird research, but May published in reputable medical journals his explanations based on woodpecker head and neck physiology and anatomy. Some lessons, perhaps, for bird biologists and maybe even neurologists.

So while some scientists are surely embarrassed about receiving an Ig Nobel prize and their research can make you laugh, perhaps their work is not always completely laughable.