Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 47

An Improbable New Era of Feedback

I am very happy to report that I’m now writing the weekly Feedback column in New Scientist magazine. That began a few weeks ago, in September 2022. It’s in addition to the things ongoing here at Improbable Research.

I am especially thrilled to be able to do this. Here’s why. The Feedback column was created by John Hoyland. John and I became frequent collaborators (he and I alerting one another to items that might, and in most cases did, turn out to be useful to me in the Annals of Improbable Research or to John in Feedback). When John died a few years ago, I wrote a remembrance and tribute to him, which I hope you will read. When New Scientist invited me to, you might say, follow in John’s footsteps, it sparked great joy.

Here are links to the first six of these columns:

On smoking, tea drinking and “mental activities after dinner”Lifting the curtain on a century-old theatre trapdoor seating systemDo men and women prefer different nose-based gestures?Ig Nobel prizes 2022: The unlikely science that won this year’s awardsWorld Standards Day approaches – but there is no standard date for itHow to boil an egg so the yolk ends up on the outside of the inside

Each column is a hodgepodge of short items — about research that makes people laugh then think. I’m trying to write these in the spirit that John Hoyland pioneered, and also in a way that’s newly improbable.

As always, if you run across things that make you laugh then think — and which the world ought to know about — please send them here. I will sort out the most appropriate and inappropriate of those, and give them a good home in Feedback or here at Improbable Research (or, if they are appropriately multifarious, maybe even, in different ways, in both).

-Marc Abrahams

 

Russian Foreign Ministry Makes Kooky Statement about the Ig Nobel Peace Prize

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement yesterday (October 12, 2022) that led people to assail us, the organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, with a question. Their question: Did the Russian government announce or imply that the Ig Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the government of the USA, because of the war in Ukraine?

The Foreign Ministry statement is, in a word, kooky.
Here, below, is the explanation.

About Zakharova’s Announcement

The Foreign Ministry’s official spokesperson, Maria Zakharova (pictured here), made a public statement. Her statement was reported by Tass and other Russian information outlets, including Sputnik.

Machine translations vary as to what, exactly, Maria Zakharova said. Some say the reports say that Zakharova said that the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the government of the USA. Others say the reports say that Zakharova said that the Ig Nobel Peace Prize should be and/or will be awarded.

We asked Russian friends to track down the audio recording of Maria Zakharova making her statement. Here is what they said: “We found the audio broadcast and listened to that specific part. She is not very eloquent, and the meaning is sometimes difficult to understand. The original makes even less sense than the machine translations.”

Correcting the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Claim

Maria Zakharova’s announcement, by any of its interpretations, is kooky.

We, the Ig Nobel Board of Governors, are issuing this statement — which you are reading now — to correct that kooky announcement from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Clearly, someone has been supplying false, nonsensical information to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Now that we have made the Foreign Ministry aware that that information is kooky, the Foreign Ministry can take steps to identify any other false information and gossip that came from the same untrustworthy source. The Foreign Ministry can welcome the opportunity to correct yesterday’s and previous false announcements.

The Real Ig Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. Ten new prizes have been awarded each year, beginning in 1991. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prizes were announced four weeks ago, on September 15.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Junhui Wu, Szabolcs Számadó, Pat Barclay, Bianca Beersma, Terence Dores Cruz, Sergio Lo Iacono, Annika Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Przepiorka, Leo Tiokhin and Paul Van Lange, for developing an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie.
They documented their research, in the study “Honesty and Dishonesty in Gossip Strategies: A Fitness Interdependence Analysis,” published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (vol. 376, no. 1838, 2021, 20200300).

The full list of new and past Ig Nobel Prize winners is at <https://improbable.com/ig/winners/>

Russia’s Most Recent Winner

The most recent Russian winner of an Ig Nobel Prize was Vladimir Putin, who shared the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education with the leaders of eight other nations. That prize was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

Did Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?

Did your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? If so, that might be a symptom of COVID-19. This medical thought is inspired by the song “Does Your Chewing Gum Lost Its Flavor“, released into the world in 1959.

Serendipitous discovery of an old improbable book

A quality that any book can have: Years after it’s been published, new people discover, happily, that it exists. Here’s a recent review, in the Twaddle blog, of the book This Is Improbable.  The reviewer says, in part:

From sky lizards to exploding meat, the research covered in this book is the epitome of eclectic, and clearly demonstrates Abrahams’ varied research interests. While the research, for the most part, is deadly serious, the book is oozing with wit and humour, and is an easy read for the sun lounger this summer.

BONUS

Here’s an old book review, in the Wall Street Journal,  of the next book in that series: “Book Review: ‘This Is Improbable Too’ by Marc Abrahams“.

From Knobs to Clicks: A Magical Month for Barry Sharpless

Three weeks ago, Barry Sharpless presented the 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Engineering to Gen Matsuzaki and colleagues, who tried to discover the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob. He also presented the 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine to Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski, who showed that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure. See photos.

Today, it was announced that the 2022 Nobel Prize for Chemistry is being awarded to Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal, and Carolyn Bertozzi, “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”.

This is the second Nobel Chemistry Prize awarded to Barry Sharpless. His first was in 2001.

Congratulations to Barry! And, of course, to Morten Meldal and Carolyn Bertozzi. And to Gen Matsuzaki, and to Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski.

Here’s video of Barry  presenting that Ig Nobel Engineering Prize:

Here’s video of Barry presenting the Medicine Prize:

And here, from last year is video of Barry presenting the 2021 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize to Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer, and Jonathan Williams, who chemically analyzed the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching.:

The shape of public health in 1967

This TV ad for Alka-Seltzer evokes the spirit of gastroenterology in the decade 1960-69.

SHARPER Night in Italy, This Friday: Improbable Science Stories

There will be lots of improbable science story sharing in fourteen Italian cities this Friday night, September 30, 2022. Stories about real science. Stories filled with mystery, confusion, excitement, and lots of intriguing uncertainty.

This is a new part of SHARPER Night in Italy — Friday night, September 30. (What, you may ask, is SHARPER? SHARPER is an acronym for “SHAring Researchers’ Passion for Enhanced Roadmaps”. That’s what.) It’s all part of the continent-wide 2022 European Researchers’ Night. This part of it is happening in collaboration with Improbable Research. Leonardo Alfonsi is the prime organizer.

Students will get together with experienced scientists and science communicators. They will tell each other stories about unexpected science discoveries, and ask unusual questions. In other words: they will talk about the actual way science almost always begins. (Most people encounter a different, less human version of how science happens. Textbooks often have transformed the quirky, funny, real stories, cooking those stories until they became smooth, dignified, Disneyfied myths.)

Here’s the official SHARPER night description:

Improbable Research is an initiative developed in close collaboration with Ig Nobel laureate founder Marc Abrahams , which revolves around the following key message: While a research question may seem “strange” and unusual, it can be a source of innovation .

The activity involves the organization of a series of meetings in the schools of the SHARPER cities. Each meeting will last about two hours and will consist of a first part of storytelling – in which a researcher or researcher tells stories of “unlikely” research and discoveries, inspired by bizarre and original questions that are then translated into innovative ideas -, followed by a creative workshop in which students will be stimulated to ask themselves unlikely questions on a research topic.

It will happen in these cities: Ancona, Camerino, Cagliari, Catania, Genoa, L’Aquila, Macerata, Nuoro, Palermo, Pavia, Perugia, Sassari, Terni and Trieste.

 

Research About Pluck and Bedbugs

Research studies about luck and about bedbugs are featured in the “Icky Cutesy Research” column in the special Rotation and Spinning issue (volume 28, number 5) of the magazine.

You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy of the issue (it’s in PDF form). Or better better still, subscribe to the magazine!

A Few Words About Bark Beetles (and lots of pictures, too)

If you somehow are not already in love with bark beetles, we self-interestedly recommend this wonderful new book: The Surprising Lives of Bark Beetles, by Jiri Hulcr and Marc Abrahams.

All-in-One Research about Lights, Food, Rotating Chair, and Earmuffs

A research study about lights, food, a rotating chair, and earmuffs is featured the “May We Recommend” column in the special Rotation and Spinning issue (volume 28, number 5) of the magazine.

You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy of the issue (it’s in PDF form). Or better better still, subscribe to the magazine!