Whale snot, bat sex win 2010 IgNobel spoof prizes

* Prizes aim for both humor and scientific research
* Handed out by real Nobel prizewinners at Harvard
* British dominate this year with four winners
Maggie Fox Reuters AlertNet 30 Sep 10;

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Researchers who used a remote-controlled helicopter to collect whale snot, documented bats having oral sex and showed that swearing makes you feel better when you stub a toe were among the winners of spoof IgNobel prizes on Thursday.

The prizes, meant to be both humorous and to encourage scientific research, are given every year by the Journal of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel Prizes, which will be awarded starting next week.

IgNobels also went to researchers who found that wearing socks outside shoes can prevent slipping on ice and that organizations would fare better if managers were promoted randomly.

Former winners of the real Nobel prizes hand out the prizes at a ceremony held at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

"There are four winners from Britain this year," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals and architect of the IgNobels.

"The British Empire had a rough 20th century. Maybe this is the best sign that the empire is surging back to prominence."

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of Britain's Zoological Society and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico won an engineering IgNobel for a new way to study respiratory diseases in whales.

"The technique involves flying a remote-controlled helicopter above a whale as it surfaces and catching the whale blow in petri dishes attached to the underside of the helicopter," they said in a statement.

A team of Chinese researchers led by Min Tan of Guangdong Entomological Institute and including Gareth Jones of Britain's University of Bristol won a biology IgNobel for scientifically documenting oral sex between fruit bats.

"Our observations are the first to show regular fellatio in adult animals other than humans," they wrote in their paper, published at http://www.plosone.org/article/ info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007595.

Oil spill researchers Eric Adams of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University and Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, along with BP Plc, won a prize "for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix."

Other winners:

-- Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University in the Netherlands for discovering that asthma symptoms abate with a roller-coaster ride.

-- Alessandro Pluchino and colleagues at the University of Catania in Italy for showing mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.

-- Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Future University Hakodate in Japan and colleagues for using slime mold to route railroad tracks.

-- Lianne Parkin and colleagues of the University of Otago, New Zealand for demonstrating that people slip and fall less often on ice if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

-- Richard Stephens and colleagues of Britain's Keele University for confirming that swearing relieves pain.

-- Manuel Barbeito and colleagues of Fort Detrick in Maryland for demonstrating that microbes cling to beards.

An economics prize was given to the "executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money."

The awards ceremony can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/improbableresearch (Editing by Eric Walsh)

Ig Nobel Prizes: Fruit-Bat Fellatio and Other Crazy Science
Clara Moskowitz livescience.com Yahoo News 1 Oct 10;

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Fruit bats enjoy fellatio. Wearing socks on the outside of shoes prevents slipping and falling. Riding a roller coaster can relieve symptoms of asthma.

These are just a few of the scientific discoveries that are being honored tonight (Sept. 30) at the 2010 Ig Nobel Prizes presented here at Harvard University's Sanders Theater. The awards honor scientific achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to an Ig Nobel release.

Winners traveled, at their own expense, from New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Americas to collect their prizes in person.

"Why not?" said winner Richard Stephens, a psychologist at England's Keele Unviersity, on his reasons for traveling across a pond to attend the ceremony. "I think it's a form of recognition. I had no qualms about saying yes."

Stephens won the 2010 Ig Nobel "Peace Prize" for proving that swearing relieves pain. Though he acknowledged the prizes are "a bit of a piss-take," he said it was an honor as well.

This year marks the 20th time the prizes have been awarded. Out of a pool of almost 7,000 nominations, a committee whittled down the list to 10 winners, said past honoree Kees Moeliker, who won in 2003 for discovering homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks. Since winning the prize himself, Moeliker has become part of the Ig Nobel organization and helps choose the champions now.

Of the 10 victors, eight attended the ceremony, where they were permitted a maximum of 60 seconds each to deliver an acceptance speech. The accolades were presented by five actual Nobel laureates in an event produced by the science, humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research."

"Scientists can take themselves way too seriously," said Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse of the Zoological Society of London, winner of the engineering award for figuring out how to use a helicopter with Petri dishes strapped to its front to collect samples of whale snot to study disease in the mammals.

She said the awards were a good chance to loosen up and share the lighthearted elements of research with the public.

Acevedo-Whitehouse and her co-researchers, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin, also of the Zoological Society, and Diane Gendron of the Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico, said they were bemused the research was being honored for the novel helicopter method, since the main project involves investigating serious health questions in marine biology. But they were glad of the recognition, nonetheless.

"Most of the time science is just ignored by normal people, and it's really sad," Gendron told LiveScience, saying this was a nice chance to reach out to non-scientists, especially children.

Before learning they were chosen for the awards, many winners admitted ignorance about the Ig Nobels.

"At first we thought it was a joke - we didn't believe it," said Ilja van Beest of the University of Amsterdam, who won the medicine prize for discovering that asthmatics feel relief after riding roller coasters. But after a little Googling, he and his co-researcher, Simon Rietveld, decided to travel in person to accept their awards.

The two scientists said they were excited to meet the other nominees and have fun.

Despite the lighthearted nature of the awards, all discoveries are legitimate research findings that have been published in scientific journals.

"There's nothing funny about what we're doing," said Eric Adams of MIT, who won the chemistry award for finding that oil and water do mix, after all. His research investigates how oil behaves during oil spills.

Though the topic is serious, he acknowledged how the finding boiled down to an amusing description, especially when the Ig Nobel committee decided to award the prize to the BP Corporation for its contribution to oil spill knowledge in the wake of the disastrous Gulf oil spill.

The honorees in the economics category - the executives of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar - who were being honored for "creating and promoting new ways to invest money - ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or a portion thereof" declined to accept in person.