Boston – A team of researchers from Japan wondered if painting cattle with zebra-like stripes would stop flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the type of pizza lizard that they would rather eat.
The researchers won the IG Nobel in Boston on Thursday, a ridiculous award for scientific achievement.
“When I was doing this experiment, I wish I could win the IG Nobel. It was my dream. Incredible. Incredible.” As a result, cows were attracted fewer flies, which seemed less troubled.
Despite findings, Kojima acknowledged that applying this approach to large scale could be a challenge.
The winners of the year received honors in 10 categories, including a group of people from Europe, who found that drinking sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and improves researchers who have studied nail growth for decades.
“At first glance, every great discovery seems tricky and ridiculous,” said Marc Abrahams, the magazine’s ritual and editor, in an email interview before the awards ceremony. “So is every worthless discovery. The IG Nobel Prize celebrates all of these discoveries, because at first glance, who really knows?”
The 35th Annual IG Nobel Prize Ceremony was organized by The Incredible Research Yearbook, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think. It is usually held a few weeks before the actual Nobel Prize was announced.
A ceremony to celebrate the winners is planned at Boston University on Thursday night, with winners expected to be bound by paper planes and subject to actual Nobel Prize winners, including Esther Duflo and Eric Maskin. Duflo won the Nobel Prize for his experimental approach to alleviating global poverty and won Maskin to lay the foundation for mechanism design theory.
A mini-play about gastroenterologists and their patients was also planned, inspired by the theme digestion this year.
Other winners this year include a group of people from India who looked at whether stinky shoes can affect someone’s experience of using a shoe rack and researchers in the United States and Israel who explored whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food. A dead researcher won a prize who spent 35 years studying nail growth and conducted a victory study from a group of international scientists who looked at whether providing alcohol to bats impairs their ability to fly.
“It’s a big honor for us,” said Francisco Sanchez, one of Colombia’s researchers studying drunken bats. “It’s really good. You can see that scientists aren’t really squares and super serious, and have fun showing off interesting science.”
Sanchez said their research found that bats are not fans of rotten fruits, and rotten fruits are often high in alcohol. Maybe there is a good reason. He said their flight and echolocation suffered losses when they were forced to eat.
“They actually drink something similar to what happened to us,” Sanchez said. “When you take some ethanol, you move slowly and you get hurt in your speech.”
