Prize-winning bastards advance ignoble cause

Someone is finally talking some sense?

Prize-winning bastards advance ignoble cause

Ian Sample October 4, 2008

A STUDY of bastards in the workplace, a theory on the relationship between sound and food and some odd revelations on the medical values of placebos have all been recognised as contributions to learning, with their inclusion among the winners of the Ig Noble awards, announced at Harvard University this week.

The Igs have become an irreverent highlight of the academic calendar, an annual exercise to celebrate research that makes people laugh first and think later. They are timed to coincide with the rather more lucrative and legitimate Nobels, which are awarded in Stockholm next week.

The Ig for literature was awarded for research into the different breeds of unpleasant character one might encounter in the workplace, while the Ig for nutrition went to scientists at Oxford University who proved stale crisps taste better when eaten to an accompaniment of crunchy sounds.

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The ceremony is hosted by the tongue-in-cheek journal Annals Of Improbable Research and is attended by real Nobel prizewinners and an audience of 1000.

David Sims, of the Cass Business School in London, whose paper You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration Of The Experience Of Indignation Within Organisations, won the literature prize, said: “I’m delighted. The whole ethos of the Ig Nobels is a wonderful way to make people think.” The paper examines how people construct roles as clever bastards, devious bastards or “bastard ex machina”, and goes on to examine the mixture of joy and guilt of labelling someone as such.

Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, was awarded the Ig for nutrition for his investigation into the gastronomical role of sound. In the study, volunteers ate crisps of varying freshness while listening to computer-modified crunch sounds. By making the crunch sounds louder, or by boosting the high frequencies, Professor Spence made people rate the crisps 15 per cent fresher.

“I’m very happy to be receiving the award,” said Professor Spence, who is now testing why crisps come in such noisy packets.

The Ig for medicine went to Dan Ariely, of North Carolina’s Duke University for a study proving costly placebos work better than cheap ones. Although all his subjects received the same sugar pills, those who thought their pills were more expensive reported less pain when given small electric shocks. “This is the proudest day of my life,” Professor Ariely said.

Other winners included the people of Switzerland, who claimed the peace prize for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity; Geoffrey Miller, at the University of New Mexico, who won the economics prize for showing lap dancers received more in tips when they were ovulating; and scientists in San Diego who showed hair, string and almost anything else will become tangled given the chance, earning them the Ig award for physics.

Not all winners understood the humour. Toshiyuki Nakagaki, of Hokkaido University, was nonplussed about receiving the Ig award for cognitive neuroscience, after showing slime mould could navigate a simple maze. “We are always serious and don’t know why they laugh once before thinking,” he said.

Guardian News & Media

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/03/1223013791569.html