

Ig Nobel: Researchers named the cream of the crop - tokenadult
http://www.physorg.com/news173708122.html

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biohacker42
_Scientists Dr Catherine Douglas and Dr Peter Rowlinson have won the Ig Nobel
Prize for Veterinary Medicine for their work looking at reducing stress levels
in dairy cattle.... can increase a farmer’s annual milk yield by almost 500
pints._

Let me get this straight, this is hard scientific proof that more humane
treatment of farm animals leads to higher yields? I don't think this is Ig
Nobel worthy. I've seen much worse.

I think Ig Nobel is great and all, god knows a lot of research is far removed
from practical applications. And given how important having a publication
history is, we need something like this to keep pointing out when things get
ridiculous. But I don't think this is all that ridiculous.

Plus besides the Ig Nobel, there's literally EVERY other media outlet, print,
radio, TV AND Internet that's either making fun of science, criticizing it or
completely and totally over hyping it which then leads to disappointment and
suspicion. In short, it's all damaging.

And then frequently it gets to politics, and then we're fucked, when politics
mixes with science, science always loses.

I am reminded of Palin and her mockery of fruit fly research. Apologies for
bringing up politics on HN, but that really got under my skin. Thank god,
someone quickly connected that research to autism. That should be like the 6
degrees from Kevin Bacon game, how quickly can you connect scientific research
being criticized by a politician to something that might benefit that same
politician or the things he/she supports.

Anyway, long rant to say, this isn't really Ig Nobel worthy.

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mechanical_fish
I think you're missing the point of the Ig Nobels. These are not the Razzie
awards. From the very first sentence of the web page:

 _The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and
then make them think._

Note, carefully, the second half of the sentence, which the Ig Nobel committee
explains to the audience every year.

These awards are quite explicitly _not_ about poking fun at bad or useless
research. Rather, the majority of recent awards are about shining a light on
well-executed, worthwhile research that would never become famous at all...
except that it can be described in a way that makes it sound hilarious.

Consider one of my favorites:

 _Harvey, J. T. An analysis of the forces required to drag sheep over various
surfaces. Applied Ergonomics, 33, 523 - 531, doi:10.1016/S0003-6870(02)00071-6
(2002)._

This is a completely legitimate paper about how to improve working conditions
for sheep farmers by redesigning the floor across which they drag the sheep
before shearing them. Nothing wrong with the work. But it sounds very funny
until you think about it. Which is good for the researchers, because when it
won the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics they got to travel over from Australia and
get some global press coverage for a paper that would normally rest quietly in
a corner of the literature.

As for whether ignorant people will use the Ig Nobels to denigrate science:
Why would they bother? It didn't take a Harvard committee to tell Sarah Palin
what to make fun of. She or her speechwriters just grabbed an issue of
_Scientific American_ and flipped to a random page.

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Luc
Another Ig Nobel went to Donald Unger, who for more than 60 years cracked the
knuckles of his left hand twice a day, but not those of his right, to see if
knuckle-cracking causes arthritis (it doesn't, in his case).

That is wonderful, he is a new hero of mine.

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tokenadult
Boston Globe report with complete list of winners:

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/missconduct/2009/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/missconduct/2009/10/the_ig_nobel_pr_1.html)

And the official announcement (with rather slow response time at the moment):

<http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009>

