SILLY SCIENCE: 2021 IG NOBEL PRIZEWINNERS
Here is a list of the 2021 winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes – to honour achievements that first make people laugh, then think – awarded at the 31st First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony on Thursday, 9 September 2021.
BIOLOGY PRIZE [Sweden]
Susanne Schötz, Robert Eklund and Joost van de Weijer, for analysing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling and other modes of cat-human communication.
ECOLOGY PRIZE [Spain, Iran]
Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela VidalVerdú and Manuel Porcar, for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [Germany, UK, New Zealand, Greece, Cyprus, Austria]
Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer and Jonathan Williams, for chemically analys- ing the air inside movie theatres to test whether the odours produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behaviour, drug use and bad language in the movie the audience is watching.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [France, Switzerland, Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, UK]
Pavlo Blavatskyy, for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country’s corruption. Reference: Obesity of Politicians and Corruption in Post-Soviet Countries by Pavlo Blavatskyy.
MEDICINE PRIZE [Germany, Turkey, UK]
Olcay Cem Bulut, Dare Oladokun, Burkard Lippert and Ralph Hohenberger, for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing.
PEACE PRIZE [US]
Ethan Beseris, Steven Naleway and David Carrier, for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face.
PHYSICS PRIZE [The Netherlands, Italy, Taiwan, US]
Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi and Federico Toschi, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians.
KINETICS PRIZE [Japan, Switzerland, Italy]
Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama and Katsuhiro Nishinari, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians.
ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE [US]
John Mulrennan Jr, Roger Grothaus, Charles Hammond and Jay Lamdin, for their research study A New Method of Cockroach Control on Submarines.
TRANSPORTATION PRIZE [Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania,
Zimbabwe, Brazil, UK, US]
Robin Radcliffe, Mark Jago, Peter Morkel, Estelle Morkel, Pierre du Preez, Piet Beytell, Birgit Kotting, Bakker Manuel, Jan Hendrik du Preez, Michele Miller, Julia Felippe, Stephen Parry and Robin Gleed, for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside down.