Today, we present the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes. The Ig Nobel Ceremony, which I write about every year, is exactly like the Nobel prizes, except that there’s not really a cash prize, it’s also given for research that didn’t work out, and they don’t pay to fly the winners in. If you want your prize, you have to come get it.
Also, apparently, the Ig Nobel Prizes could be given posthumously, I guess since they’re not flying you in anyway. Your yorshim can come in. So if you did science this year and didn’t win, don’t dismay. You can still win after 120.
For example, the Biology Prize went to two scientists in the 1930s, who were looking for a way to produce more milk. They noticed that some cows were harder to milk, almost as if they were holding on to it. So they wanted to figure out if there was some way to get the cows to release, and they thought, “Maybe if we scare the cows.”
Well, how do you scare a cow? Cows are pretty big.
Well, how do you scare a person? For example, you can blow up a paper bag, sneak up behind the person, and pop it right next to their head. So that’s what they did.
No, really. Look it up.
But then they said, “What if cows are not sufficiently scared of paper bags?” So they decided to stand a cat on the cows’ backs. The plan was, you pop the bag, the cat goes “RAO!” and the cow goes, “OW!” Every morning. This was the long-term plan.
So they placed a cat on a cow’s back as the milker was being attached and then exploded paper bags, quote, “Every ten seconds for two minutes.”
I don’t think I can pass that test.
What is the cat still doing there? Was it strapped on? The article did not say.
The researchers soon realized they didn’t need the cats, so they got rid of them, which is what you’d say in your report if all the cats have long since run away and you’re covered in scratches.
But what they found was that terrified cows actually release less milk. And also that sneaking up behind cows and popping a paper bag is a great way to get kicked through the wall of a barn.
The Peace Prize this year went to American psychologist B.F. Skinner, for his experiments to improve the accuracy of missiles during WWII, using pigeons.
This was also posthumous, but not because of anyone getting kicked through a wall.
During WWII, the Allies developed ways to shoot missiles farther, but what they didn’t think about until afterward was, “Well, what about accuracy?”
“Does that matter?”
“A little!”
It’s not like they could call the enemy afterward and ask, “How did we do? I’ll tell you what we were aiming for, and you can tell us where we hit, so we know what to adjust for tomorrow.”
Enter the top-secret Project Pigeon, which was brainchild of B.F. Skinner. Skinner became inspired by how birds can maneuver in the sky and drop payloads with crazy accuracy, and he thought, “Maybe they could pilot the bombs.”
He’d already trained pigeons to peck on things on a screen to get food. It was a small step from that to piloting a missile. Or at least peck on things on a windshield.
So he fitted a spot inside the missile to hold a pigeon, and then he trained the pigeons to peck at an image of a battleship. With each peck, the nose of the bomb would face the target.
Actually, he designed the nose to hold 3 pigeons, in case one would get distracted by, say, a bug on the windshield. He figured, “Maybe we should put 3 pigeons in there, so we can put it to a vote.” And they were in 3 separate compartments, so they wouldn’t all be distracted by the same bug.
Ultimately, Skinner formed a squadron of 64 pigeons, because the thing about putting pigeons in a missile is that they’re not reusable. He demonstrated his idea to the government, using pigeons trained to target features on the New Jersey coastline.
The government did originally give him money, but eventually pulled the plug on the project to divert the funds to one of their other secret weapons, such as the atom bomb, which it turns out did not have to be super accurate. And Skinner was left with, quote, “A loft full of curiously useless equipment and a few dozen rapidly-aging pigeons with a strange interest in the New Jersey coast.”
Some of the prizes, though, were awarded to people who are alive. For example, the Physics Prize went to researchers in the US for demonstrating the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
The researchers wanted to explore how fish might use less energy while swimming, by basically just riding the current. But they were like, “We need a really relaxed fish for this.”
So they used trout, which are known for bears just plucking them out of the water. And then they thought, “What’s the most relaxed trout we can use? Ooh! A dead one!”
So they got themselves a dead trout, and they, I don’t know, defrosted it, and voila! The dead fish exhibited “unnervingly similar kinematics to a live fish, with the exception that it cannot put on the brakes.”
“Where’s Bob going?”
“Oh, he died earlier.”
This study was published posthumously of the trout.
And then there was Saul Newman, who won the Demography Prize this year for his detective work into all these people who are famous for having the longest lives.
Have you ever wondered why with all these people, it’s like, “The world’s oldest woman just had a birthday; she’s 138, and she lived in some third-world country!” and you wonder, “How is this possible?” And then the reporters ask her, “What’s your secret?” and it’s never diet and exercise. It’s some made-up thing, like yak milk.
I don’t think baby yaks live to 138.
And then everyone starts drinking yak milk.
You ever wonder what their real secret is? It’s lousy record keeping.
Saul found that all these countries who have the world’s oldest people also, totally coincidentally, are countries that have an inaccurate system of record keeping.
For example, he noticed that almost none of the people over 110 have a birth certificate. Though that’s fair. A birth certificate is a flimsy piece of paper as old as you are. There’s no way I’m going to still know where mine is when I’m 110. But new people are turning 110 every day (maybe not every day) and still no birth certificates.
He also found a link between people who reach remarkable ages and places where there’s a hefty amount of pension fraud. For example, Tower Hamlets in England has more 105-year-olds than all the richest places in England put together. But almost no 90-year-olds. How does that happen? It must be something in the yak milk. Also, in Japan, he found that 82% of the people listed as being over 100 are actually dead. Apparently, the secret of living past 100 is don’t register your death. Just keep swimming.
“Where is he, though?”
“He’s swimming!”
And they get away with it, because who’s challenging it? I’m not. The second oldest person? He’s tired. Or lying himself. The hundredth oldest person? He’s going to prove the 99 above him are liars? And then what? His secret to long life is not stressing about stuff like this.
And speaking of total coincidences, this brings us to this year’s Probability Prize, which went to a team of over 50 researchers for showing, through 350,757 coin flips, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side that it started.
We think it’s 50/50, but it’s not. It’s biased by whatever side you start off on. Though what side you start off on is 50/50. So it doesn’t really matter.
Someone noticed that, as it turns out, in all the tests that had been done before that showed that it was 50/50, they never recorded what side it started on. So that person said, “I think it lands on the side it starts from.” And his colleague said, “I think you’re wrong.” Who’s to say? “Let’s flip a coin… Okay, best 2 out of 3… Best 3 out of 5…” And eventually the numbers got away from them. And by the time they got to 350,757 coin flips, they said, “I guess this was the experiment.”
How did they decide how many flips were enough? Maybe their budget ran out. You’d think the entire budget would be 25 cents, but if they want to be scientific, they have to keep switching coins.
The theory was that because of how the coin is flicked, it spends slightly more time with the original side facing up. How slight? The argument was that it had a 51% chance of landing on that side.
This wasn’t a waste of time at all.
The question now is what would happen if you glued the coin to a buttered piece of toast, and also to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow?
I think that needs a bigger budget.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.