Most people don't know it, but scientists like to have fun too.
Though they have a reputation for being disciplined, they don't always spend their time chipping away at the world's important, yet mirthless, mysteries. Sometimes, a physicist would simply like to know whether it's possible to levitate a frog (or a sumo wrestler) using magnets. Or a doctor might be curious about the snapshots he'd get if he put a randy young couple in an MRI scanner and had them go at it. (The snapshots he got!)
For these people, there's the Ig Nobel Prize, an award given each year to people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." The honor -- which will be bestowed upon 10 more people on Thursday evening at Harvard University -- goes to academic achievements which are goofy but not altogether frivolous, and which also paint a smile on the dour face of academic pursuit.
"Some of (the achievements) are pretty funny and some pretty horrible -- a few are unfortunate, but some are important, too," said Marc Abrahams, the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, the Harvard-based "humor magazine of science" which sponsors the award.
This is the prize's 11th year, and in that time it's become one of those events that some of the more knowing members of the academy look forward to, maybe (secretly) even more than the real Nobel.
The Igs differ from the Nobels -- which turn 100 this year -- mostly in the kinds of questions answered by the recipients. A Nobel winner will spend years or decades solving a universally puzzling bit of science; an Ig winner will spend a few weeks on an entirely private mystery, something that's been eating at his -- and probably only his -- brain.
Here's an illustrative example: A Nobel economist will perhaps try to unravel the true sources of inflation, and see whether his ideas might be employed by a forward-looking government. An Ig Nobel economist will instead focus on the true source of periodontal disease -- "Is it economic strain?" he might ask. "Will a forward-looking accountant solve my toothache?"
That was a question that apparently bugged Dr. Robert Genco of the University of Buffalo, who won a 1996 Ig for his discovery that, indeed, financial problems are a risk indicator for periodontal problems.
Consider as well the research of Justin Kruger and David Dunning, two Cornell psychologists who won an Ig last year for their paper "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."
Without actually speaking to Professors Kruger and Dunning, it's probably a good guess that this was a question that had been bugging them for a long while: "Are some people so dense that they can't even see how dense they are?"
The answer, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology last year, was a resounding yes. "People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains," the paper states.
"The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability."
But as Abraham said, while these awards are funny, they're also a bit important -- perhaps, to most people, more important than other parts of science.
Think of all the incompetents out there who'll benefit from Kruger and Dunning's findings; think how precious the world would be if the people who told bad jokes knew how truly bad they were.
Isn't that a whole lot more important, really, than pinning down the age of the universe?
