http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2007

 

samples of research recognized by the Ig-Nobel committee of judges this year, in four different categories:

 

LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that

rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

 

"Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats," Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100.

 

AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that

Viagra helps hamsters get over jetlag.

 

"Sildenafil Accelerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules," Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9.

 

 

PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called

"gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.

 

 

NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with

a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.

 

If you scroll down from this year's list of winners you will find the awards for 2006 and other past years. Some of these are quite remarkable. i'm interested to know how you compare the merit of past years' with this year's Ig-Nobels. Do you see any from past years that set the bar way above what was honored in this year's ceremony.

 

They do, of course, have a real ceremony

A lot of these awards are quite....interesting to say the least. Its amazing to see what scientists and engineers do when they have lots of free time on their hands...

 

I especially like the "Gay bomb", its pretty funny

Unsurprisingly there's a list in wiki.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners

My personal favorite is the Royal Navy winning the peace prize for shouting "Bang!" rather than actually firing missiles

LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that

rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

I've always wanted to know that.

I dunno, except for the dutch rat one, those actually sound pretty interesting.