Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners
91 by mkl · · arstechnica.com · 25 comments
It's not really a surprise that less ethical people on average are richer than ethical people. Sad, but logical: they more often choose selfishly and thus amass more money.
This is the correct direction of causation in this case, imho.
Is it? Wealth is used as a proxy for virtue, and has been for a long time. "Nobility" has two meanings, after all. Why the same word, if not the same root sentiment? Unless one definition was originally meant sarcastically.
This one feels like it deserves more than just an Ig Nobel.
Far more or far less? The study is so profoundly flawed that it should be in a hall of shame, along with whatever journal published it.
I knew immediately this was BS, sure enough, someone already beat me to it with the comment explaining why.
Man, I'm so ashamed of my field (experimental psychology). Maybe ~60% of publications are literally worse than useless (that is, they are outright intentional lies).
Are you impugning the good name of the Ig Noble awards? For shame!
The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why anyone would even bother engaging with (experimental psychology)
A paper am a coauthor of uses an Ig Nobel winning article as a reference. Because in fact it was a serious piece of research with practical implications.
This article had me at pneumotachometers (emphasis mine):
> Unno used a pair of pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases) in parallel for his experiments to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.
It wasn't clear to me in the article, but the best splash-free urinal ("nautilus"), is the tall skinny one second-from-right in the photo.
In addition to having the correct angle to minimize splash, it also fits a wide range of heights and is easier to clean than some of the other designs they tried.
The official list is at https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 but Ars Technica has a lot more detail.
I like that so many of the winners attended the ceremony, one should never take yourself too seriously.
Are they still using the little girl?
THAT invention deserves its own ignoble category for contribution to public discord.
>"But this year’s winning team didn’t go the robot route; instead, they adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. [...] The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips."
Strangely, this idea has at least a small amount of merit... The idea that an organic, carbon-based structure (in the above case, a mosquito proboscis -- but it could have been a separate, non-living individually 3D printed from organic materials, organic part) would make a good 3D print head with exceedingly fine resolution, is not a terrible idea!
(Note that for the record, I do not endorse killing mosquitos, or any other insect to make 3D print heads, or really, anything else!)
FWIW IgNoble award winners aren't inherently bad projects. Some are bad research but the winners tend to be projects that just sound weird or stupid but have legitimately research value.
The famous levitating frog guy has the double; one Nobel, one IgNobel.
>The 36th ceremony took place on September 3rd in the Congress Center of Zurich, Switzerland, and was hosted by the University of Zurich and ETH Domain, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests.
Another loss for the US thanks to Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
Also, every political speech needs a "Miss Sweetie Poo".
The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why any other NATO nation would buy any weapons from the USA.
They buy our weapons because we make a shit ton of them. We're not great at a lot of things, but manufacturing weapons for mass slaughter is up towards the top of our specialties.
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> IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>