2013 IGNOBEL PRIZES - FOR THE WACKIEST AND OFTEN MOST USELESS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

People's tax dollars at work - Samples of how scientists engage in studies that are sometimes nothing but wasted time and effort in pursuit of pointless "results".

 

Here are this year's Ignobel Prize winners.

Psychology: An experiment that found people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.

Winners: Laurent Bègue, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, Medhi Ourabah and Brad Bushman.

 

Joint prize in biology and astronomy: An experiment that showed lost dung beetles can use the Milky Way to find their way home. 

 

Winners: Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke Scholtz and Eric Warrant.

 

Medicine: A study assessing the effect of listening to opera on heart transplant patients who are mice.

 

Winners: Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi.

 

Safety engineering: An electro-mechanical system to trap an airplane hijacker by dropping him or her through a trap door, sealing him or her into a package and then dropping the packaged hijacker (with a parachute) to the ground where police will be waiting.

 

Winner: Gustano Pizzo

 

Physics: The discovery that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond - if both they and the pond were on the moon.

 

Winners: Alberto Minetti, Yuri Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, and Francesco Lacquaniti.

Read more - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2419856/Ig-Nobel-Prizes-won-scientists-researching-beer-goggles-star-gazing-dung-beetles.html


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