Oct. 5, 2007 — Scientists who discovered that Viagra helps hamsters overcome jet lag and a Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung won top honors Thursday at the 17th annual Ig Nobel Awards.
The awards, a tongue-in-cheek homage to their Scandinavian counterparts, were announced during a raucous ceremony at Harvard University in Massachusetts that shone a bright light on obscure and often bizarre research and inventions.
The Igs, as they are known, are chosen by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to highlight scientific achievements that, in the words of editor Marc Abrahams, "first make people laugh and then make them think."
Among the winners were a British-U.S. duo for a penetrating report on the effects of sword swallowing and a Spain-based team who answered the question of whether rats can discriminate between Japanese and Dutch spoken backwards.
"It was a surprise, it was the last thing we expected," said Nuria Sebastian-Galles, one of the Barcelona team of scientists, of the findings. The awards, she said, "bring out the freak inside most scientists."
Seven of the 10 winners this year paid their own way to accept the awards, which were handed out by six real Nobel Prize laureates.
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Although pelted by paper airplanes, as per tradition, each winner expressed delight at receiving the small trophies affixed with a chicken and an egg.
Asked why chickens were chosen as this year's theme, master of ceremonies Abrahams looked astonished and said only: "How could you not?"
Some scientists have complained that the satirical awards unfairly tarnish legitimate research. Others say a sense of fun humanizes scientists.
"I don't take it as an insult at all," said Brian Witcome, a British radiologist who won the medicine prize for his sword-swallowing research.
"Humor adds to research," he said. His co-author, US scientist Dan Meyer even gulped down a short sword before thanking the whooping crowd with the hilt between his teeth.
Past winners who showed up included the creator of the pink plastic flamingo, the inventor of a hiding alarm clock and a researcher who reported the first known case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
"To the best of my knowledge, this behavior has not been observed in chickens," Dutchman Kees Moeliker deadpanned.
