Drunk worms, plastic plants imitating real plants and the swimming ability of a dead trout: Ten scientific studies that are intended to “first make you laugh and then make you think” have been awarded “Ig Nobel Prizes” in the USA. The unfunded fun prizes, awarded for the 34th time by a magazine for curious research, are intended, according to the organizers, to “celebrate the unusual and honor the imaginative”. “Ignoble” means something like “dishonorable” in German.
The traditionally shrill gala, which had only taken place digitally for four years in a row due to the corona pandemic, was celebrated for the first time with an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge on the US east coast on Friday night. Scientists from the Netherlands and France, for example, were honored in the chemistry category for using chromatography – a process for separating a mixture of substances – to separate drunk and sober worms. US scientist James Liao received the award in the physics category for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
Some of the prizes also went to Germany: Scientists Christian Büchel, Tahmine Fadai and Lieven Schenk from the University of Hamburg received the award in the medicine category for demonstrating that fake medicine with painful side effects can be more effective than fake medicine without painful side effects. US scientist Jacob White and his Brazilian colleague Felipe Yamashita, who works at the University of Bonn, were awarded in the botany category for discovering evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring plastic plants.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240913-930-231099/1
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