The Ig Nobel Prize, an award given each year to people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced," were handed out on Thursday night at Harvard University.
Here are the winners.
MEDICINE
Peter Barss, of McGill University, for his impactful medical report "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts."
Published in: The Journal of Trauma, vol. 21, no. 11, 1984, pp. 990-1.
PHYSICS
David Schmidt, of the University of Massachusetts, for his partial solution to the question of why shower curtains billow inwards.
BIOLOGY
Buck Weimer, of Pueblo, Colorado, for inventing Under-Ease, airtight underwear with a replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad smelling gases before they escape.
ECONOMICS
Joel Slemrod and Wojciech Kopczuk, of the University of Michigan Business School, for their conclusion that people find a way to postpone their deaths if that would qualify them for a lower rate on inheritance tax.
Reference: "Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel Slemrod, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8158, March 2001.
LITERATURE
John Richards of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society, for his efforts to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive.
PSYCHOLOGY
Lawrence W. Sherman, of Miami University, Ohio, for his influential research report, "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children."
Published in: Child Development, vol. 46, no. 1, March 1975, pp. 53-61.
__ASTROPHYSICS __
Dr. Jack and Rexella Van Impe, of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Michigan, for their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.
Reference: The March 31, 2001, television and Internet broadcast of the "Jack Van Impe Presents" program (at about the 12-minute mark).
PEACE
Viliumas Malinauskus, of Grutas, Lithuania, for creating the amusement park known as "Stalin World."
TECHNOLOGY
Awarded jointly to John Keogh, of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in the year 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012.
__PUBLIC HEALTH __
Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari, of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents.
Reference: "A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2001 June; 62(6):426-31.
