Scienza Squilibrata

A play on the words "ignoble" and the "Nobel Prize"

 

The Ig Nobel prize is annually awarded to ten researchers who carried out "strange, funny, and even absurd" research, the kind of improbable "achievements that makes people laugh and then think". The stated purpose of the award is "to reward the unusual, imaginative, and stimulate public interest in general science, medicine and technology." The winners are selected from articles published in high-level scientific journals.

 

Sponsored by the American magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), the Ig Nobel Prizes are presented to the public during a gala ceremony held in Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, and also delivered by real winners of Nobel prizes. The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students. Unlike the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel do not have a cash prize for the winners. The ceremony is held within a few days from the "Ig Informal Lectures" at MIT, during which graduates can explain to the public the results and the importance of their research.

 

The first edition of the Ig Nobel Prizes was held in 1991. The awards have drawn criticism sometimes - as in the case of the two given to research on homeopathy - but more often draw attention to scientific articles that contain funny aspects or curious anecdotes.

Examples of winning researches range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the claim that blacks holes fulfill all the technical features that would make them the place where hell could be located.

 

In 1995, Sir Robert May, science Chief Advisor of the British government, asked the organizers to exclude British scientists from getting any of these prizes, claiming that the awards were in danger of dropping into the ridiculous experiments considered "genuine". May was criticized by the entire British press, and his request was ignored.

 

Contrary to the Darwin Awards, which have a pure entertainment purpose, that of the Ig Nobel (as well as that of Unbalanced Scientists) is also to attract the public interest about science.

 

The ceremony is recorded and broadcasted live on National Public Radio in the US and in recent years, the Ig Nobel Tour has brought shows in the United Kingdom during the "National Week of Science".

Since 2001 you can watch the award ceremony of the Ig Nobel prizes live on the Internet. With a month of delay, it is then made available for streaming to broadband users in Real Player format.