The Ig Nobel awards are a parody of the Nobels for ‘improbable science’

The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes that are awarded for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The prizes generally go out for interesting but strange research.

This year’s awards for for research including:

• Nutrition: For electronically modifying the sound of potato chips to make a person chewing them believe they are fresher than they really are.
• Archeology: For measuring how armadillos scramble dig sites thereby confusing the order to history
• Biology: For discovering that fleas living a dogs can jump higher than fleas on cats
• Medicine: For showing that high priced placebos are more effective than cheap placebos. This actually makes sense to me (I have blogged about the effect on wines)
• Economics: For showing that lap dancers make more money when they are fertile (also blogged this one before)
• Physics: For mathematically proving that a heap of string will almost certainly tangle into knots (seriously)
• Chemistry: For discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicid

Very cool. Check out more detail on the winners and previous winners here.