2022 Ig Nobel Awards — Funny and also Fasinating — #IgNobel

You might perhaps see the term “Ig Nobel Award” and think “the what award?”.

OK, let’s start there.

The IgNobel awards are parody, but also serious, and yet still done as a spoof, but the research that wins is real research published within credible peer-review journals. Those that win also generally turn up to claim their Ig Nobel.

Those that win also get a cash prize.

If you have honestly no idea what this is all about, have never come across it before, then a good place to start might be the Wikipedia page that describes it all. There they explain …

The Ig Nobel Prize (/ˌɪɡnoʊˈbɛl/ IG-noh-BEL) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The name of the award is a pun on the Nobel Prize, which it parodies, and on the word ignoble (“not noble”).

Organized by the scientific humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), the Ig Nobel Prizes are presented by Nobel laureates in a ceremony at the Sanders Theater, Harvard University, and are followed by the winners’ public lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2]

Perhaps the best way to grok it is to simply dive into the deep end and start swimming (or sinking).

The 2022 Award Ceremony

The 32nd (yes really, 32 years) Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happened on Sep 15.

Like the 2020 and the 2021 ceremony it was, (in deference to the persistently lurking ambitions of Covid-19) entirely online. Least you wonder, prior to that they really did do this face-to-face as a deeply funny fun night out at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater.

If you really don’t want to read the book, then you can skip it and simply watch the movie.

If you have 90 mins to kill (91.22 to be precise), and you are in any way a science fan, then you just might find this to be a blast (or not) …