Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, North America

SCIENCE: Gay Bombs, Randy Hamsters and Other Wondrous Items

Adrianne Appel

CAMBRIDGE, U.S., Oct 5 2007 (IPS) - Some of the world’s most esteemed scientists paraded on stage in silly egg costumes as a researcher of airborne hamsters on Viagra was feted at the annual Ig Nobel science awards Thursday at Harvard University.

The Ig Nobels, a good-natured swat at absurd science studies and the wide-eyed curiosity (often far divorced from utility) that produces such work, bring Nobel Laureates and science fans together for an evening of geeky science spoofing, and the awarding of nine Ig Nobel prizes.

“It’s a place where we can exhibit for everyone to understand, people who misuse science. And the Ig Nobel is exactly that,” William Lipscomb, who received the Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry in 1976, told IPS.

While the awards are mocking, they are somewhat of a coveted in-joke among scientists around the world.

Argentinean biologist Diego Golombek merited an Ig Nobel for his careful study of hamsters on Viagra. Golombek simulated jet lag in hamsters and then fed them tiny doses of Viagra, the drug used to enhance male sexual performance, to see what happened.

“If it worked for hamsters, why not us?” Golombek asserted in defending his research, while bigger-than-life slides of hamsters flashed on a screen above.

The raucous crowd cheered as he accepted the award and threw scores of paper airplanes onto the stage. They fell at the feet of Lipscomb and the other true Nobel Laureates: Sheldon Glashow (Physics 1979), Roy Glauber (Physics 2005, for his work with lasers), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry 1986), Robert Laughlin (Physics 1998) and Craig Mello (Physiology or Medicine, 2006, for his work on genetic expression).

“This is my first Ig Nobel ceremony and perhaps my last,” Mello told IPS after the ceremony. “But it’s always good to show that scientists have a human side.”

Japanese researcher Mayu Yamamoto was honoured for her painstaking efforts to extract a vanilla flavour from cow manure, depicted in a giant slide of a cow, a cow “pie” and the chemical formula for vanilla.

A local ice cream maker bounded on stage and announced that he had created a new ice cream flavour in her honour. An assistant then handed dishes of the ice cream to the Nobel Laureates, who faltered. Mello proved the bravest among them, and dug in first. He gave it a thumbs up.

Other awards went to a Chilean study of how sheets become wrinkled, a British study of the deleterious effects of sword swallowing on internal organs, and a Taiwanese invention of a net for catching bank robbers.

The evening was dictated by arcane rules, like the requirement that the awardees explain their studies in 60 seconds.

“Wrinkle, wrinkles on my skin, I wonder how you do begin,” said Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, of Santiago, Chile, who used his time to recite a poem about his study.

Glenda Browne, a literature indexer of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, showed a way with words in her speech following her award for her work on the proper handling of the word “the” in titles.

“Few know that we worry ceaselessly about how to index,” she explained.

Brian Witcombe, consultant radiologist of Gloucester, England, spent many months gathering data on “Sword swallowing and its side effects,” and published his results in the British Medical Journal last year.

He worked closely with Dan Meyer of the Sword Swallowers Association International, based in the U.S. state of Tennessee, about injuries common among sword swallowers. The work was described as “penetrating” and “a cut above the others”.

Meyer showed his satisfaction with the honour by proceeding to swallow a sword on stage.

Other awards went to a Dutch scientist for her complete census of the organisms we share our beds with each night: dust mites, bacteria and the like. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk accepted her award while giant images of dust mites flashed above the stage.

“I found that you never sleep alone,” she said. “Nature does not stop at the windowsill.” She went on to explain, in under 60 seconds, that the seats the audience were sitting on were swarming with bacteria, who were attracted to the sweat of their bottoms.

The audience was spared further description when Miss Sweetie Poo, an 8-year-old girl who is an integral member of the Ig Nobel ceremony team, walked over to van Bronswijk and implored, “Please stop, I’m bored!” It worked.

An Ig Nobel award also went to the U.S. Air Force’s Wright Laboratory, for its exploration of a chemical that would thwart an enemy, the so-called, “gay bomb”. The Air Force theorises that the chemical would destroy enemy ranks by causing the troops to become sexually irresistible to each other, and unable to keep their attention on anything else.

Nobody Air Force officials were in attendance to accept the award.

Another award was given to a Spanish research team for their close study of the impact of backward foreign speech on rats.

The Nobel Laureates, other well-known scientists and academics were invited to come on stage and explain an aspect of research in 24 seconds or less, then in seven words.

Lipscomb stole the show with his pointed statements: “Chickens lay eggs. It’s a standing ovation.”

American historian Jill Lapore met the 7-word challenge when she said, “History is the study of dead people.”

Ig Nobel host Marc Abrahams, also the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, a journal that features wonderfully absurd or wasteful scientific studies, closed the ceremony by saying, “If you didn’t win an Ig prize this year, and especially if you did, better luck next year.”

He wore a ratty top hat with a rubber chicken popping out of the side.