PEACE PRIZE [INDIA, PAKISTAN]
The governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door.
REFERENCE: Numerous news reports.
On nearly every morning's dogwalk, I think the 2014 Ig Nobel BIOLOGY PRIZE is bunk.<p>> for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth’s north-south geomagnetic field lines.<p>And that this study must be flawed, because my dog (n=1) does not align.<p>Maybe the research study area was a city with a strong North-South <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan</a>
"Hitman hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman who tells police" discussed on HN:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21361849" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21361849</a> (240 comments)
> NOTE: This is the second Ig Nobel Prize awarded to Alexander Lukashenko. In the year 2013, the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
Times of India, the most popular english daily in India, removed Narendra Modi's name when mentioning about the Medical Education Category
<a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/poop-knives-arachnophobic-entomologists-win-ig-nobels/articleshow/78198176.cms" rel="nofollow">https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/poop...</a><p>both in print and digital.
As a person who suffers badly from misophonia (which is not limited to chewing sounds) it’s pretty fucking grimly depressing to see research on it treated this way.
Thanks OP, I needed that. After all the depressing stuff in my life these past few months, it was nice to feel amused enough to genuinely laugh out loud.
> MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE ... Bolsonaro, Johnson, Modi, Trump, Putin, et al. for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.<p>We shouldn't consider this result news nor funny. The pattern has been happening with the environment for decades.<p>I suggest we should use it as motivation for scientists and doctors to learn leadership skills, recognizing that humans don't just respond to facts and figures. Like it or not, we respond to stories, images, community, personality, and so on. We aren't likely going to lead Trump to learn science so if we want science in our leadership, we'll have to take the initiative.
The prize is a bit of pop culture anti-intellectualism bullshit.<p>I've used one of the famous former winners ("Psychoacoustics of a chilling sound") with relation to work. Solid paper studying real phenomenon.
While we are here, do not forget the new Toohey Awards. <a href="https://tooheys.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tooheys.org/</a>