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Award ceremony 2014: The traditionally shrill gala was canceled this year due to the corona pandemic
Photo: BRIAN SNYDER / REUTERS
They are supposed to "first make you laugh and then think": Ten scientific studies in the USA have been awarded "Ig Nobel Prizes" (pronounced "ignoble", which translates as unworthy).
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the traditionally shrill gala was held exclusively on the internet for the first time on Friday night.
According to the organizers, the undoped awards, which have already been presented for the 30th time, should "celebrate the unusual and honor the imaginative".
Scientists from Canada and the USA, among others, received the award in the Psychology category for developing a method for identifying narcissists by examining their eyebrows.
A researcher from the United States received the award for collecting evidence that entomologists are afraid of spiders.
Scientists from Austria, Sweden, Japan, the USA and Switzerland received an award in the acoustics category for being able to induce a female Chinese alligator to roar in an airtight chamber filled with helium.
The other winners:
Scientists from the Netherlands and Belgium have found a name for people who can't stand the smacking of others: Misophonia is the desperation when hearing other people's chewing noises, a previously unrecognized medical finding.
For this there was the prize in the
medicine category
.
In the
Science category
, scientists from Scotland, Poland, France, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Australia and Italy were recognized for attempting to quantify the relationship between a country's income inequality and the average frequency of kissing on the mouth.
The governments of India and Pakistan have their diplomats secretly ring each other's doorbells in the middle of the night and then run away before anyone can open the door.
For this prank they received the award in the
category of peace
.
A researcher from Germany is also among the winners - he received a prize in the
physics category
: Together with colleagues from all over the world, he researched what happens to a living earthworm when you let your body vibrate at a high frequency.
It became unusually political this year in the
Medical Education category
: The heads of state of Brazil, Great Britain, India, Mexico, Belarus, the USA, Turkey, Russia and Turkmenistan were honored for using the coronavirus pandemic to prevent To teach the world that politicians can have a more direct impact on life and death than scientists and doctors.
Usually more than 1000 spectators follow the gala live in a theater of the elite Harvard University.
"Where the hell is everyone?" Asked the scientist Jean Berko Gleason right at the beginning of her traditional welcome speech - alone in front of her computer.
The ticket income finances the spectacle, which is why the organizers asked for donations this time.
But even at the one and a half hour online award ceremony, which this time had the main theme "Insects", paper planes flew, there were skits and bizarre short operas.
"We hope that the pandemic will be tamed by next year and that we will be able to hold our 31st award on stage again," said moderator Marc Abrahams, editor of a scientific journal on curious research - before ending the gala with his traditional closing words, as always : "If you haven't won an Ig Nobel Prize this year, and especially if you have won one: better luck next year!"
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lmd / dpa
