Anna Kushnir

I have been inside Harvard’s Sanders Theater just twice in my life. The first time was riddled with pomp and circumstance, and not too many laughs. PhD diploma ceremonies are rarely comedic, it turns out. The second time was far more memorable. How could it not be? Yesterday, my second evening in Sanders, was spent in the company of the man, the legend, the researcher behind the seminal work, “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage,” Dr. Frank Fesmire. Now which of these evenings would you remember best? Thought so.

I was one of the very lucky attendees (lucky because Alex Palazzo got tickets! Thanks, Alex) of yesterday’s Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University. The Ig Nobel is awarded to researchers by the Annals of Improbable Research, “for achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK.” The award ceremony itself was theatrical, dorky, hilarious, genuinely sciencey and interesting in turn. In attendance was an actual Nobel Prize winner (the no-joke kind of Nobel), William Lipscomb, winner of the 1976 Nobel in Chemistry, as well as Benoit Mandelbrot, the Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale and the man responsible for fractals (he also happened to give a talk on fractals at my high school when I was in 9th grade and bears a striking resemblance to my grandfather. Benoit and I go way back).

Benoit Mandelbrot, in the process of being awarded to a lucky winner of a “Win a Date” game.

Though the tone was light and the air filled with paper airplanes, the science was genuine and at times really interesting. One prize that caught my attention was the Ig Nobel in Medicine, awarded to Dan Ariely from Duke University for the discovery that expensive fake medicine is more effective than cheap fake medicine. Though ridiculous at first glance, his work has the potential to affect the way placebo pills are marketed (if there is actually a market for them. I believe that there is, since I have taken PE).

The hands-down, most ridiculous prize of all had to be the awarded to Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo, a professor of archeology in Brazil, for his study about how an armadillo can wreck an archaeological dig overnight. I almost hurt myself laughing, not only at the very concept of the study, but at the slides projected above the stage.

For a full list of Ig Nobels awarded this year, see the Improbable Research website.

This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners, some of whom traveled very far (as far as Japan!) at their own cost, to accept the award.

The Ig Informal Lectures, during which current and past Ig Nobel winners present their work during brief, 5 minute talks, will take place Oct 4, 2008 at 1PM at MIT, Building 10, room 250, 77 Mass Ave in Cambridge.