Do you experience pain when you go over a speed bump? You might have appendicitis. That’s according to Thursday’s2015 British Ig Nobel Prize winners, who were joined by other great achievers in science such as the chicken that walks like a dinosaur, a man who repeatedly stings himself with a bee and a study into the length of time mammals pee.
Researchers from Stoke Mandeville Hospital published apaperin the BMJ after they discovered a number of patients with appendicitis had a particularly painful journey on their way through Aylesbury, a residential town with an unprecedented number of speed bumps. Their formal study found that 33 of 34 patients with appendicitis felt pain as they bumped their way through the sleepy Buckinghamshire town. This research that has, erm, shaken the world of science was enough for the team to bag themselves an Ig Nobel Prize fordiagnostic medicine. Congratulations!
There were more winners on the night, ranging from a chicken dressed as a dinosaur (video later…) to the discovery of the word ‘huh?’. You can find the full list of 2015 Ig Nobel Prize winnersherebut you need go no further for a brief synopsis of the new boundaries explored in science:
- TheCHEMISTRY PRIZEwas awarded for the invention of a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg (breakfast disasters averted?).
- ThePHYSICS PRIZEwas awarded for a team who determined that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).
- TheLITERATURE PRIZEwent to team who diligently scoured the world’s languages to discover that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language, though further study is required to ascertain why.
- TheMANAGEMENT PRIZEwas awarded for discovering that many business leaders became risk-takers in childhood when they experienced natural disasters that had no dire personal consequences - for themselves.
- TheECONOMICS PRIZEwent to theBangkok Metropolitan Policefor offering to paypolicemenextra cash if thepolicemenrefuse to take bribes (emphasis added).
- TheMEDICINE PRIZEwas awarded to two groups for experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities).
- TheMATHEMATICS PRIZEwent to duo Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer who used mathematical techniques to determine whetherMoulay Ismael the Bloodthirstymanaged to father 888 between 1697 and 172.7
- TheBIOLOGY PRIZEwas awarded to a team who observed that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.
- And finally thePHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZEwas jointly awarded to two individuals, whose painstaking work into bees had a real sting in the tail. Justin Schmidt created Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects, and Michael L. Smith had beesrepeatedly sting him on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm), and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft, eek!).
Now into its 25th year, the ceremony, described by the leading journalNatureas “arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar,” celebrates the scientific achievements that make people laugh, and then think. It might be a silly set of awards, but it would be hard to Ig-nore its contribution to science.
Oh yes, and here’s that dinosaur chicken video we promised you…