A Theatrical Tribute To Unexpected Science

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. We hope you had a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving. And we’re glad you’re with us today because, here at Science Friday, the day after Thanksgiving is our own kind of holiday tradition– highlights from this year’s Ig Nobel award ceremony.

The awards are handed out each year by the editors of the science humor magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research, for work in science that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. It’s stuff that might make you say, hmm, I wonder. Shower thoughts, some people call them.

This year’s celebration is the 34th first annual awards. And for the first time in several years, the ceremony was held post-COVID in person in a theater on the MIT campus. Glad to see them all back in the flesh.

This year’s ceremonies featured a mini opera about Murphy’s law, you know, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and prizes handed out by genuine, real Nobel laureates. Just to explain a few things before we start, there are a few traditions at the ceremonies, like the traditional welcome, welcome and goodbye, goodbye speeches. There’s an official who will sound an alarm if things threaten to get too raunchy.

And then there’s Miss Sweety Poo, a little girl who starts to whine whenever the speakers go on too long. And you know what? Sometimes the speakers try to bribe her, but she always wins in the end. So here’s our post-Thanksgiving tradition as we take you back to earlier this year at MIT, where the dignitaries and the dignitaries are taking the stage.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

MARC ABRAHAMS: Welcome.

[LAUGHTER]

MARC ABRAHAMS: Welcome.

[CHEERING]

[? KAREN HOPKIN: ?] Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, welcome to the 31st fourth annual Ig Nobel– oh, sorry. Welcome to the 34th first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

[APPLAUSE]

Tonight, we are going to award the 2024 Ig Nobel prizes. Soon we will welcome our most special guests, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. This year’s winners represent many countries and exactly one planet.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, ladies and gentlemen, children and elders, literati, glitterati, pseudo intellectuals, quasi-pseudo intellectuals. pseudo-quasi intellectuals, smoots, bots, bacteria, wilbies, has-beens, victims of Murphy’s law–

[CHEERING]

And the rest of you, may I introduce our master of ceremonies, the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, chief airhead Marc Abrahams.

[CHEERING]

MARC ABRAHAMS: Tonight, today, no, tonight, we honor some remarkable individuals and groups. Every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people laugh and then makes them think. The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is produced by the magazine, our magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research.

[APPLAUSE]

And it’s produced in collaboration with the MIT Press. The editors of the Annals of Improbable Research have chosen a theme for this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. That theme is Murphy’s law.

[CHEERING]

Murphy’s law–

[CHEERING]

–is the idea that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. There are many other ways to phrase that. Many of them are wrong.

[LAUGHTER]

Tonight, there are 10 prizes. The achievements speak for themselves. Yet we will speak of them.

The prizes will be presented to the winners by Nobel laureates. Please welcome the Nobel laureates who will hand out the prizes. Let’s give each of them a hand, 2007 Nobel laureate in economics, Eric Maskin.

[APPLAUSE]

A 2009 Nobel laureate in economics, Esther Duflo.

[APPLAUSE]

A 2009 Nobel laureate in economics, Abhijit Banerjee.

[APPLAUSE]

A 1997 Nobel laureate in economics, Robert Merton.

[APPLAUSE]

A 2023 Nobel laureate in chemistry, Mungai Bawendi.

[APPLAUSE]

A 1990 Nobel laureate in physics, Jerome Friedman–

[APPLAUSE]

–is, again, unable to join us on this particular night. He joins us, though, as usual, via the magic of recorded video.

JEROME FRIEDMAN: Congratulations! I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am.

[LAUGHTER]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now let’s get it over with, ladies and gentlemen. Whoever the awardee– whomever the awarding of the 2024 Ig Nobel prizes. We are, as you’ve heard several times, giving out 10 prizes. The winners do come from many nations. They have all earned their prizes. Karen, tell them what they’ve won.

[? KAREN HOPKIN: ?] This year’s winners each get an Ig Nobel Prize.

[APPLAUSE]

Sorry, and they get a piece of paper.

[BEEP]

This piece of paper says they’ve won an Ig Nobel Prize.

[APPLAUSE]

I have it in here somewhere. Ladies and gentlemen, now I will show you the coveted Ig Nobel Prize.

[APPLAUSE]

This year’s Ig Nobel Prize is a transparent box. The box contains historic items about the history of Murphy’s law. Some of these items are missing, and the box is almost impossible to open.

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Peace Prize.

[HARMONICA PLAYING]

The winner is from the USA. The Ig Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the late BF Skinner for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles. Accepting on behalf of Skinner, here is his daughter, Julie Skinner Vargas.

[APPLAUSE]

JULIE SKINNER VARGAS: On behalf of my father, BF Skinner, I want to thank you for finally acknowledging his most important contribution. People know him only for discovering operant conditioning, schedules of reinforcement, and for books like Walden 2, Verbal Behavior, Beyond Freedom D, and, and, and more. Even the BF Skinner Foundation fails to put a missile on its hat. So thank you for finally putting the record straight.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Anatomy Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SKINNER VARGAS: Stay together. Stay together. Can everyone hear me? Can everyone hear me? This is room 10-250. It’s one of the most famous rooms here at MIT. It’s used for all sorts of lectures. Nobel laureates have lectured here. MIT presidents have been introduced to the world here. Fortunately, nothing that important seems to be going on right now.

Now, I’m told that if you want to take a nap during your class, the best place to do it is back there in Row P. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And if you were ever to be here when it was empty– which is very unusual because it’s used about 90% of the time– but if you were ever to be here when it was empty, I’d suggest you look under your seat, because it’s been said that more than one MIT student leaves their slide rules behind when they graduate. Anyway, our next stop is the Infinite Corridor, so we don’t want to linger. We don’t want to linger.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Anatomy Prize. The Ig Nobel Anatomy Prize is awarded to Marjolein Willems, Quentin Henoch, Sarah Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kugon, Vincent Fleury, Romie Ray-Siguere, Juan Jose Cortez Santander, Roberto Requena, Julian Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khansari for studying whether the hair on the heads of most people in the Northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, as hair on the heads of most people in the Southern hemisphere.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 1: (FOREIGN ACCENT) We warmly thank the scientific committee to have chosen our publication about genetic determinism and hemisphere influence on hair whirl direction. So to make a long story short, it began with the observation of my own twin identical daughters when they just were born. I observed the same direction of the whirl, but one left-sided and the other one right-sided. So I decided to investigate and I called my friend, Hossein.

HOSSEIN: Yes, so we found interesting results on twins, and then we decided to check this quite strange hypothesis, whether they would turn in opposite direction in the Northern and Southern hemisphere. So then we started working with colleagues from Chile, and we realized that, in fact, they do.

[LAUGHTER]

It’s nearly clockwise for everyone.

SPEAKER 2: Please stop. I’m bored. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop.

HOSSEIN: Next year for the rest.

MARC ABRAHAMS: We have a demonstration. Everyone here in this room, would you please look at the head of the person directly in front of you, who is slightly below your level? And please, by raising your own arm in the air and twirling it, indicate in which direction, clockwise– oh, if you’re wearing a hat, would you please remove it? Please indicate, by raising your arm in the air and twirling it, which direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, the hair is swirling.

IRA FLATOW: We have to take a break, but we’ll be right back with more from the Ig Nobel awards in just a moment. You’re listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. In case you’re just joining us, we’re playing highlights from this year’s Ig Nobel Awards ceremony, research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. It was recorded in September of this year on the MIT campus. Here’s Ig Nobel Master of Ceremonies again, Marc Abrahams.

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Botany Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winners are from Germany, Brazil, and the USA. The Ig Nobel Botany Prize is to Jacob White and Philip Yamashita for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 3: (FOREIGN ACCENT) Thank you. I would like to thank the organization, and also [NON-ENGLISH] for funding our research. This research was based on a plant who can mimic the leaf of other plants, and we just used a plastic leaf, and this plant mimic the plastic leaf. And how they do that? Our hypothesis is this boquila plant have some sort of eye. They can see what’s going around. And how they do that, we have no idea. We need to continue studying on this plant, but to study on this I needed a position, so I just finished my PhD and I need a job now.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. And I need a job to continue this research. Thank you.

MARC ABRAHAMS: Thank you. Now get set for the 24/7 lectures. We’ve invited several of the world’s top thinkers to tell us, very briefly, what they are thinking about. Each 24/7 lecturer will explain their subject twice. First, a complete technical description in 24 seconds, and then after a brief pause, a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. The first 24/7 lecture will be delivered by economist and Nobel laureate Esther Duflo.

[APPLAUSE]

Her topic is climate injustice. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go.

ESTHER DUFLO: (FOREIGN ACCENT) Taking into account our full carbon footprint, an American, in a top decile of the income distribution, emits 120 times as much CO2 as an African in the bottom half. However, extrapolating from the marginal impact of past weather realizations, researchers estimate that higher temperatures could lead to at least six million extra annual deaths by 2100, concentrated in poor countries, which are both hotter–

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.

ESTHER DUFLO: (FOREIGN ACCENT) The rich consume. Heat kills the poor.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The next 24/7 lecture will be delivered by ornithologist, Ig Nobel Prize winner, and Natural History Museum Director Case Moeliker.

[APPLAUSE]

His topic, Murphy’s law and ducks. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go.

CASE MOELIKER: (FOREIGN ACCENT) The 130 species of ducks are spread worldwide in wet habitats. In a duck’s life, anything can go wrong, but ducks are resilient. They’ve evolved to handle predators and harsh conditions, aggressive mating, and even human impact. Their numbers and diversity show that while things do go wrong, they’re built and behave to survive, ensuring their presence in a changing world.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.

CASE MOELIKER: (FOREIGN ACCENT) Ducks prove that nature overcomes Murphy’s law.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Medicine Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winners are from Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium. The Ig Nobel medicine prize is awarded to Levon Schenck, Tomine Fide, and Christian Büchel for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side effects.

[LAUGHTER]

The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Esther Duflo.

SPEAKER 4: (FOREIGN ACCENT) Well, thank you very much for this prize. It’s a great honor, of course. I’m very happy to be here. So we actually investigated side effects and how they actually can improve treatments. And although this sounds very counterintuitive, in some cases, previous research on placebo effects actually suggests that this is the case. So we investigated it, and we found that this is the case, that non-painful side effects can actually lead to a bigger pain reduction. And yeah, if you’re interested in the details, I have to refer you to the paper. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The physics prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winner is from the USA. The Ig Nobel Physics Prize is awarded to Jimmy Liao for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

[LAUGHTER]

The prize is presented by Nobel laureate Luigi Lorenzi.

JIMMY LIAO: I discovered that a live fish moves more than a dead fish, but not by much. Not by much. A dead trout towed behind a stick also flaps its tail to the beat of the current, like a live fish, surfing on swirling eddies, recapturing the energy in its environment. A dead fish does live fish things, using its body like a sailboat to tack upwind, its torso undulating, acting as a lift-producing sail and a stabilizing keel at the same time. Fluids flap flexible fish forward from forces and feedback. The water swims the fish.

[APPLAUSE]

A flaccid trout ignited my career and I’ll forever be grateful. Thank you, Ig Nobel, for not ignoring the fun and fundamental science. Viva la fish!

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Physiology Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winners are from Japan and the USA. The Ig Nobel Physiology Prize is awarded to Ryo Okabe, Toyo Fumi Chen Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Setona Tanaka, Akihiko Yosahi– pardon me, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy Thompson, Gokool Kanaan, Egy Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.

[LAUGHTER]

Prize is presented to them by Nobel laureate Robert Merton.

SPEAKER 5: (JAPANESE ACCENT) First and foremost, thank you so much for believing the potential of anus for breathing potential. So in Japan, we have an interesting creature called loaches that has the capacity to suck up oxygen from the bats. So why we can’t do that? So that was the question we started. So let me show how it works with this extraordinary colleagues.

[LAUGHS]

So we start from making oxygenated liquids and then preparing that beforehand. Then this very talented professors in the surgery in prominent university in Japan– these are full professors, by the way, and operating every day, but he just helping to peak model first and try to–

[LAUGHTER]

–inject– thank you so much. As with loaches, they are injecting lots of bubbles in the baths, and then eventually pump it up, enjoying the extraordinary capacity to suck up the oxygen, eventually leading to improvements of respiratory failure conditions.

SPEAKER 2: I’m bored.

SPEAKER 5: OK.

SPEAKER 2: Please stop. I’m bored.

SPEAKER 5: Now we survived–

SPEAKER 2: Please stop.

SCIENTIST: We started clinical trials.

SPEAKER 2: Please stop.

SPEAKER 5: Any volunteers are welcome.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

SPEAKER 2: Please stop. I’m bored.

MARC ABRAHAMS: It’s time for the next 24/7 lectures. This 24/7 lecture will be delivered by the permanent acting interim Executive Director of MoBA, the Museum of Bad Art, Louise Reilly Sacco.

[APPLAUSE]

Her topic, bad art. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go.

LOUISE REILLY SACCO: Museum quality bad art is, first of all, art, created by someone seriously attempting to make an artistic statement, but has gone horribly awry in concept or execution. Poor technique is not sufficient, unless the lack of drawing ability, perspective, or sense of color results in a compelling image. Many works contain over-the-top imagery, whether or not the artist’s intent is decipherable by the artist or the audience.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now–

[MUSIC PLAYING]

–a clear summary. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.

LOUISE REILLY SACCO: It’s art too bad to be ignored.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The next 24/7 lecture will be delivered by economist and Nobel laureate Eric Maskin. His topic, Murphy’s law and economics. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go.

ERIC MASKIN: In the pandemic, the government sent checks to low income individuals. This had the dual purpose of tiding the neediest people over and propping up demand to avoid a downward recessionary spiral. Unfortunately, a perfect storm of broken supply chains meant that demand exceeded supply, causing notable inflation. In other words, if you conduct fiscal policy before your chickens have hatched, you might end up with egg on your face.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.

ERIC MASKIN: The fiscal stimulus won’t cause Inflation. Oops.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The final 24/7 lecture will be delivered by rock star and human curtain rod, Amanda Palmer. Her topic, Murphy’s law and musical performance. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go.

AMANDA PALMER: You’re a musician, so don’t throw me under the bus, OK? The one time you decide to select the two-legged fellowship Icelandair flight from Boston to London to kick off a tour will coincide with the exact afternoon that the infamous ash cloud volcano erupts, thereby grounding your flight in Reykjavik and trapping you in Iceland. The decision to book a tiny, unnecessary gig in Christchurch, New Zealand will coincide with the exact afternoon that the Christchurch earthquake kills almost 200 people, destroying the venue that you were meant to be performing in five hours later, crowding your flight and trapping you in Northern New Zealand.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I got 2/3–

MARC ABRAHAMS: And now–

AMANDA PALMER: I got 2/3 in.

MARC ABRAHAMS: –a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go.

AMANDA PALMER: If it’s all going well, just wait.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: A public service announcement. Did anyone lose an Ig Nobel Prize and a $10 trillion bill here?

IRA FLATOW: In this year’s Ig Nobel Mini Opera, the International Murphy’s Law Song Competition Contest Opera, about a competition to see who can perform the most Murphy-esque song about Murphy’s law. And of course, during the opera, things went wrong.

[OPERA MUSIC PLAYING]

Here’s a taste of the opera.

SPEAKER 6: (SINGING) We need to pass a law of imperfection, a law that will give people some protection to ease the suffering and vile sensation that comes from fairness, yes, and from frustration. With everything that can and will go wrong, we all know, yes we know it will go wrong.

We need a law requiring punishment or firing for whenever someone is successful, because it is distressful for the rest of us to see the wicked cruelty and the unfairness when they succeed while my life is a mess. We must imprison them. They are deserving. And when they fail to fail, it is unnerving. If they think that the bad times are behind them, the legal system really must remind them.

We must succeed in making people fail. If they should fail to fail, send them to jail. We must succeed in this. We will not, will not let a single, single, single thing go right. So whenever anything goes right, we must require that it goes wrong. We need to pass a law of imperfection to give my, our, grievances some real protection.

[APPLAUSE]

IRA FLATOW: Coming up, more highlights from this year’s 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Awards. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. And we now return you to highlights from this year’s Ig Nobel Awards ceremony.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The Awards are presented by the editors of The Science Humor Magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, and you can find out more about them at Improbable.com. Here’s Master of Ceremonies, Marc Abrahams, with more of the Awards.

MARC ABRAHAMS: The 2nd Paper Airplane Deluge is about to commence.

SPEAKER 7: Please prepare your paper airplanes for the 2nd Paper Airplane Deluge. But remember, safety first. Throw your paper airplanes only at the designated target. Prepare your airplanes for launch.

Huzzah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Probability Prize. The winners are from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The Ig Nobel probability prize is awarded to Frantisek Bartos, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexandra Sarioglu, Hendrik Gudman, and many colleagues for showing, both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side as it started. Prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Aisha Banerjee.

AISHA BANERJEE: (FOREIGN ACCENT) So we flip coins over 250,000 times, which means 650 hours of constant coin flipping, or about 81 work days. It might seem ridiculous at first, and perhaps it was. We wanted to test a prediction from Diaconis, Holmes, and Montgomery, who argued that when people flip coins, the coins wobble in the air. Because of this wobble, coins presumably tend to land on the same side they started. But the effect is very small, possibly only 1%.

We found compelling evidence for the effect. Also, some people show effects larger than others. Finally, there seems to be learning effects, and the more coins you flip, the less biased you become. So we would encourage everybody to pick up this fascinating line of research and maybe attempt a replication of our experiment as well. Good luck.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: We have a demonstration, and we ask for a volunteer from the audience to do this demonstration. We will give you a coin, some paper, and a pencil. And then you will replicate the experiment rapidly the full number of times. If you would like to volunteer, just raise your arm, please. OK. All right. Thank you. When the ceremony ends, if you have not finished doing the full number of experiments, you can remain here in the lecture hall for as many months as you need. The Demography Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winner is from Australia and the UK. The Ig Nobel Demography Prize is awarded to Saul Justin Newman for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth and death recordkeeping.

[LAUGHTER]

The prize is presented by Nobel laureate Luigi Biondi.

SPEAKER 8: OK. I was working away in my little lab, undisturbed by Bunkum and Woo, when I was told the way not to get old was the blue zones lifestyle breakthrough. And at the stroke of a pen, they had solved medicine and shown how geriatrics keep breathing. Long living, they said, in the abstract I read, has the secret of heavy inbreeding.

And when that didn’t sell, they thought, grandly well, we shall play out the long game in sales. And when searching about for a secret to tell us a way to outlive all the whales. But the secrets fell over like a lover in clover when I checked the government books. The blue zones are poor. The record’s no more. The 100-year-olds are all crooks.

[LAUGHTER]

So the secret, it seems, to live out your dreams and make sure you keep living, not dying, is to move where birth certificates are rare, teach your kids pension fraud, and start lying.

[APPLAUSE]

And I’d like to thank my mom, my dad. I’d like to thank all the old people who are collecting the pension while they’re dead. It’s really excellent work. I’d like to thank the world’s oldest man for having three birthdays. I’d like to thank the–

SPEAKER 2: Please stop.

SPEAKER 8: OK.

SPEAKER 2: I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop.

[APPLAUSE]

Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored.

MARC ABRAHAMS: The Chemistry Prize. The winners are from the Netherlands and France. The Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize is awarded to Hesse Heremans, Antoine de Blaye, Daniel Bon, and Sander Watterson for using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

Prize is presented to them by Nobel laureate Eric Maskin.

SPEAKER 9: So if you show a long, slender, wiggly object to a chemist, he will tell you it’s a polymer. But if you show the same thing to a biologist, he will tell you it’s a worm that moves because it’s looking for food. The naive question we asked is what the actual difference between the two systems is.

SPEAKER 10: And to answer this question, we said, let’s do worm chromatography. So we made the worms flow through a maze, which you see there. But before doing that, we made half of them drunk, inactive, and we painted them blue. So now we’re going to reproduce the experiment on stage. It was a rafting race between a sober red worm and a drunk blue worm.

SPEAKER 11: OK, get ready.

[WHISTLE]

Set. Go.

[RATTLING]

MARC ABRAHAMS: And the winner is sober worm.

[APPLAUSE]

CHILD: I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored.

MARC ABRAHAMS: This is the 10th and final prize. The– I said the already?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

MARC ABRAHAMS: Mind if I say it again? The Biology Prize.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The winners are from the USA. The Ig Nobel Biology Prize is awarded to the late Fordyce Ely and the late William E. Peterson for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow to explore how and when cows spew their milk.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

Here to accept the prize on behalf of the winners are the daughter and grandson of Fortis Ely, Matt Wells and Jane Wells.

[APPLAUSE]

The prize is presented to them by Nobel laureate Esther Duflo. Go ahead and say thank you. Go ahead.

MATT WELLS: Ahem. An excerpt from this work. “It was thought that there might be a difference in the response of the two halves of the udder, as measured by the rate of ejection of milk if the cow was severely frightened. Accordingly, the cow was systematically frightened as the mechanical milker was attached. Frightening, at first, consisted in placing a cat on the cow’s back and exploding paper bags every tens for two minutes. Later, the cat was dispensed with, as unnecessary.”

[APPLAUSE]

We have a demonstration.

[LAUGHTER]

For which we ask the five Nobel laureates to assist us. Would the minor domos please bring out the cow, the cat, and some paper bags?

[POPPING]

SPEAKER 12: One more time.

[POPPING]

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: Thank you. Thank you. As you leave the lecture hall– as you leave the lecture hall, in about two minutes, possibly, please help us tidy up. There are some stray paper airplanes, and if you gather them, perhaps you would like to bring one of those stray paper airplanes to an Ig Nobel Prize winner and get an autograph, transforming it into a historic item of some sort. Now Barry Duncan will give the traditional Ig Nobel goodbye Goodbye speech.

BARRY DUNCAN: Goodbye. Goodbye.

[APPLAUSE]

MARC ABRAHAMS: Thank you for joining us at the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. We estimate that next year’s ceremony will be the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Now, on behalf of Improbable Research and the MIT Press and everyone here, please remember this final thought, if you didn’t win an Ig Nobel Prize tonight, and especially if you did, better luck next year. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

IRA FLATOW: And that about wraps it up for us. Thanks to Marc Abrahams and everybody at the annals of Improbable Research. You can find out more about them at improbable.com. We’re going to leave you with a selection from this year’s Ig Nobel Mini Opera, entitled The international Murphy’s Law Song Competition Contest Opera.

[OPERA MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 13: (SINGING) The day begins great, A-OK, mate. Happy laughter, ha-ha-ha.

[LAUGHTER]

But just wait, mate. Your luck will mutate. It’s your fate, mate. It’s Murphy’s law.

First the day breaks. Then your phone breaks. Then your car’s brakes start to fail. Then some jerk makes you get headaches. Ooh, that jerk. Will these bad brakes make you quail? Then some old schmuck screws with your luck. And your coffee fails to perk. Then you get struck by a dump truck. Is it just luck or just some quirk?

More than one time in your lifetime you smelled a solid, sweet success. But so often, it goes soft, then it becomes a crappy mess. You’ve worked so hard, always on guard, fending off each fatal flaw. But it’s no good. No way you could have withstood–

AUDIENCE: Murphy’s law.

SPEAKER 13: Murphy’s law.

[APPLAUSE]

[? KAREN HOPKIN: ?] Well, well, well, well, well.

IRA FLATOW: One more thing before we go. The end of the year is almost here, and we need your help to recap the best science stories from 2024. Tell us your favorite science news stories or discovery from this year. Your submission might even be featured in our recap. Share your thoughts and find out how you can attend our New York City event on December 6th, all on our website, ScienceFriday.com/Science2024.

If you missed any part of the program or you’d like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcast, or point your device to our website at ScienceFriday.com. You can join us on social media and check out all our great newsletters, too. If you want to reach us the old-fashioned way, yes, our email address, SciFri@ScienceFriday.com. Have a great weekend. I’m Ira Flatow.

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