IG Nobel Prize Winners 2025
improbable.comThe cacio e pepe paper posted here a couple of months ago won it in the category of physics: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/37/4/044122/3345324/Pha...
I cooked cacio e pepe a few times over the past few months specifically because I saw it on HN there! It's delicious. Try it!
Me too! That’s why I found it so exciting to find it as IG Nobel Prize Winnder!
Some are funny, but not ridiculous.
For example,
> for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
This isn't absurd. It is currently thought that the stripes are NOT for camouflage, since simulated predator vision (such as lions) cannot resolve them. It is believed that one reason for the stripes could be to act as a deterrent against flies (how exactly, not sure).
In this sense, testing whether it works on cows isn't absurd!
The great thing about this award is that it’s often real and beneficial science.
The study debunking blue zones won, but it was some of the best science I’ve ever seen. (Removing false knowledge is more important than adding new knowledge)
Turns out the Mediterranean diet doesn’t help you live to a hundred, there was just a lot of pension fraud in Italy.
Turns out best predictor of Japanese centenarians is if the local records hall was destroyed in World War Two (because the records were replaced by non native speaking records clerks)
Of course Ig Nobel prizes aren't necessarily intended only for absurd or ridiculous research. Their stated purpose is to honour achievements that "make people laugh, then think".
Sometimes that means the achievement (or "achievement") is something genuinely absurd. Other times it's not.
The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony is also up on YouTube and is worth a watch as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1cP4xKd_L4
Ig Nobel has been around a while. I wonder if there is an opportunity for them to add a feature whereby they (and donors) could _sponsor_ research in areas that would be considered candidates. Research that would otherwise be too trivial or arcane to be funded.
The winner for Psychology made me think, for a moment, about HN: "Telling people they are intelligent correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness: The influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism," by Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles E. Gignac. Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... . The entire list is hilarious, and also makes you think. Go read the whole thing!
Oh boy… this is going to be a tough pill for me to swallow…
That's absolutely right!
I don’t imagine you meant to, but this triggers my LLM sense because of the way Claude Sonnet 4 responds to any critique.
Gemini thinking: The user is confused and mistaken
Gemini reply: That's an interesting and insightful question!
Ah, I understand the problem now.
I absolutely meant it
In your case, it's because you actually are smart
The plot goes deeper, and deeper. Maybe it is plots all the way down?
> Go read the whole thing!
No, if you're looking for a cure go read something about, say, quantum physics instead.
what if you understand quantum physics?
Then watch this:
This quote always comes up. I think it is worth pointing out the age of this quote (look at the video!). We (physicists) didn’t understand quantum mechanics then. We do now.
If you're in the London area at the end of October, the Royal Institution is hosting a special event where "Ig Nobel Prize winners will gather on stage to ask each other questions about their work"
> bonjour ca va?
> > me not speaking a word of french
> > consumes alcohol
> > ca va bien merci et tu?
After consuming even more: >> .. et toi?
> Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.
I thought it was common knowledge?
I thought it was common knowledge that it makes you feel like you could speak a foreign language better. I don't think it's that obvious that the improvement would be objective or that others around you would feel the same way about you.
(And of course there's a Ballmer peak in any case.)
Amusingly, the study found the exact opposite!
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881117735687Participants who consumed alcohol had significantly better observer-ratings for their Dutch language, specifically better pronunciation, compared with those who did not consume alcohol. However, alcohol had no effect on self-ratings of Dutch language skills.
Lots of science is "common knowledge"! This is one of those things that I'm glad to see confirmed in a study.
Of course! It also makes you wittier, taller, and better looking. Everybody knows that.
Not only you, but also makes people of the opposite sex around you more attractive
But now you can put it on wikipedia and cite a proper double-blinded study!
Does this count as evidence for Ballmer Peak?
test whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content. …
Oh wow, I thought you were proposing a silly experiment, but that was the chemistry winner...
Yeah, I don’t understand how this study was deemed ethical, let alone win.
Because Teflon is harmless to the human body. It is inert. It interacts with nothing. We literally make replacement body parts out of it.
This is a case where conventional wisdom on HN is wildly out of sync with actual science.
Just because it's inert doesn't mean it's harmless. I'm pretty sure that if you shove a wad of it in your windpipe, you won't last very long. Also go check out water poisoning.
Yes, just like you can die if you choke on food.
Drink a pint of it then?
It's a solid.
I was curious about this study as well, both because the idea seems genius and wildly unsafe. I mean, I know teflon is inert, but really safe for consumption in quantities required for satiation? I googled the paper's title, and here it is: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26810925/
The answer is that it's a study in rats, seemingly (from the abstract) a very successful one. Probably a bad idea to introduce that amount of "forever chemicals" into the environment, but the central idea seems pretty sound.
Isn't PFAS, created by the production of teflon, the real issue?
They should add Avi Loeb PhD powered obsession with the exploding traffic of alien probes crossing our Solar System....
Maybe the Galactic Council just opened a new discount shuttle route over Class 4 Civilizations areas like us: (Non-Fusion, Non-Warp and apparently Non-Skeptical...)
I wonder if the guy ingesting Teflon to replace food heard about PFAS...?
Teflon itself is mostly harmless, it’s the byproducts from manufacturing people are more concerned with (PFOA, etc)
Right? That was the most weird and dystopic shit in the list. They even filed have a patent!