The man or woman who spends years testing a hypothesis, and has to build special recording equipment to prove their theories to the world are people to be vaunted; just look at the hundreds of people who worked their buns off to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, for instance. These men and women are hard-working, fprward-thinking, and likely more intelligent than your average. They are to be celebrated.
But what of the man who allowed himself to be stung by 200 bees to prove where it hurts the most? Or the person who discovered that all mammals take about 21 seconds to urinate? Or the chemists who managed to un-boil a hard-boiled egg? For these champions of the bizarre, there is a special award ceremony: The Ig Nobel Prizes. Held every year by the magazine Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel Prizes are devoted to achievements in comedic science.
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Last night saw the 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes awarded at Harvard University. The big winners were entomologist Justin Schmidt and Cornell researcher Michael Smith who proved, using personal experience, where bee stings hurt the most (including on a penis, ouch). Another winner was a pair of German and Austrian mathematicians named Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer who investigated if the 17th century Moroccan king Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty could have fathered 600 children as the legend goes.
Your science teacher in the 8th grade always tried to stress that scientific research was fun, but then would have you time balls rolling down hills like usual. The Ig Nobel Prizes ensure that science is not only fun, but can still be off-the-wall. Have a theory you want to prove? You could be eligible next year.
Above Picture: Reuters
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
