Ig Nobility
So, The Annals of Improbable Research released the 17th Annual Ig Nobel Prizes, and the list is intriguing. If you don’t know these awards, they’re a humorous take on some of the research we academics are doing. The kind that’s easy to make fun of. This year I’m thinking, though, “I want to know more about this!”
Okay, I get a little queasy thinking about the possibility of cooking with vanilla extracted from cow dung, but I’m curious about the process that led Mayu Yamamoto to consider this research direction. I’m also curious about what led Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon, and Núria Sebastián-Gallés to explore the phenomenon that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
What intrigues me, though, is that a couple of the Ig Nobel Laureates are exploring things that, at another time in my life, I might have considered. Take, for example, the work of literature Laureate Glenda Browne. She studied the word “the” and the problems it causes in alphabetization. This alphabetizing thing has frustrated me for most of my adult life, and computers are only exacerbating the problem. If Dr. Browne’s research can bring some sanity to this area, then I emplore her to continue her work.
And what of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the winner of this year’s Peace Prize. The lab is working on a research into a bomb that would make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other. The thinking behind thisis that soldiers would be likelier to concentrate on love rather than war. This is cool. My first thought is that since this is a gay bomb, we should proceed cautiously in making the military gender neutral. My second thought, though, is that if this were research done right, we’d learn so much about the science of sexual orientation and the politics and complexities of warfare (not that I’m thrilled that these are part of the same research project) that I could be fascinated for days.
And that’s where I end this morning. Anyone can take our research and with a quick turn of phrase make it seem trivial. What makes the Ig Nobel awards fun is that we have a sense of humor about ourselves and our work. That I like. And the truth is, there’s little that is ignoble about this work–our work. I do, in fact, want to know about the results of the study by Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, whom completed a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns, and fungi with whom we share our beds each night. As queasy as it might make me, this is interesting stuff.