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This Year's Ig Nobel Prizes: Way Funnier Than Warren-Brown Debate

Darn! Why did I spend last night yawning through the Brown vs. Warren Massachusetts senatorial debate when I could have been having an uproarious time at the Ig Nobels, the ever-hilarious, Cambridge-based prizes for "improbable research"? ("The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." Mostly, I'd say, the former, but they do foment the important message that scientists can be fun, too.)

Well, at least I can still crack up just from reading the latest winners here on the Ig Nobel site. They include such gems as:

ANATOMY PRIZE: Frans de Waal [The Netherlands and USA] and Jennifer Pokorny [USA] for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

De Waals Ig Nobel
Famed primate researcher Frans de Waal accepts his Ig Nobel for findings on chimpanzee rear-end recognition (Photo: David C. Holzman)

MEDICINE PRIZE: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE] for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode.

And how can the actual Nobels ever compete with this literature prize?

"The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports."

This year, there's also a special bonus: On the eve of the ceremony, the Harvard Crimson offered its favored picks, including this one:

Biology Prize: U.S. Representative Todd Akin, for his creative new conception of female biology. His work on the female reproductive system made us laugh with disbelief, cry with existential anguish (or deep offense), and think he was ignorant.

This program aired on September 21, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

Headshot of Carey Goldberg

Carey Goldberg Editor, CommonHealth
Carey Goldberg is the editor of WBUR's CommonHealth section.

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