2023 Ig Nobel Prizes: Honoring the Winners of Unconventional Research That Elicits Laughter and Reflection

The Ig Nobel Prizes for 2023 have been announced, recognizing research that combines humor and thought-provoking insights. Established in 1991, these awards honor unconventional achievements in science. The winners will deliver public talks in the weeks following the ceremony, sharing their unusual but scientifically valuable findings.

Chemistry and Geology Prize

Jan Zalasiewicz from the University of Leicester received both the Chemistry Prize and Geology Prize for explaining the scientific significance of licking rocks. In his essay, "Eating Fossils" published in the November 2017 issue of the Palaeontology Newsletter, he emphasized that wetting the surface of rocks enhances the visibility of fossil and mineral textures.

Literature Prize

Researchers conducted experiments with student volunteers to induce jamais vu, a sensation of unfamiliarity with familiar words, similar to déjà vu but the opposite. They found that those who reported experiencing déjà vu in their daily lives were more likely to experience jamais vu, indicating a potential correlation between the two phenomena.

Public Health Prize

Seung-min Park from the Stanford University School of Medicine received the Public Health Prize for developing the Stanford toilet, a device equipped with various technologies to monitor and analyze human excretions. The committee recognized Park's work, including recent publications in Science Translational Medicine.

Mechanical Engineering Prize

Rice University graduate student Faye Yap and her colleagues transformed dead wolf spiders into tiny air-powered grippers for manipulating small electronic components, pioneering the field of "necrobotics."

By inserting a needle into the spider's prosoma and attaching it with superglue, they created a hermetic seal that allowed the grippers to open and close with the administration of puffs of air, successfully lifting objects more than 1.3 times the spider's body weight and demonstrating robustness in 1,000 open/close cycles.

Communication Prize

Residents of La Laguna, Spain, who are proficient in backward speech have sought recognition from UNESCO and the Canary Academy of Language, though the latter dismissed it as having no scholarly value.

A study by Torres-Prioris et al., found that expert backward speakers, two of whom were native Spanish speakers, showed a behavioral advantage for reversing words with enhanced gray matter volume and functional connectivity in key language-associated brain regions, indicating that unconventional language expertise can lead to neuroplastic adaptations.

Medicine Prize

The University of California, Irvine, received the Medicine Prize for their unique study utilizing cadavers to investigate the equality of nasal hair distribution. By meticulously counting and measuring nose hairs in 20 cadavers, they discovered an approximate average of 120 hairs per nostril, with lengths ranging from 0.81 to 1.035 cm.

Nutrition Prize

In 2011, researchers Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura sought to expand our sense of taste by using electric stimulation, replicating a "swimming tongue" similar to that of a catfish. They devised a system that utilized electrical stimuli delivered through straws and chopsticks, allowing users to perceive an "electric taste," with voltage adjustments playing a crucial role in enhancing taste detection.

Education Prize

In a 2020 study, Katy Tam et al., explored the connection between teacher boredom and student motivation in the classroom. They found that when teachers were bored, students' motivation to learn decreased. Additionally, students' perceptions of teacher boredom, even if inaccurate, also led to reduced motivation.

Building on this research, a 2023 study investigated whether students' anticipation of a boring lecture could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Results from multiple studies supported the idea that when students expected a lecture to be boring, they were more likely to feel bored during the lecture.

Psychology Prize

Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz received the Psychology Prize for their 1969 study conducted at the City University of New York. Their experiment involved observing people on a city street to determine how many individuals would stop and gaze upwards when they noticed strangers doing the same.

Physics Prize

The Physics Prize was awarded to a team led by Bieito Fernández Castro from the University of Southampton. They conducted research in 2022 focused on measuring the impact of anchovy sexual activity on the mixing of ocean water.