2025 Ig Nobels
A few of the winner citations:
Peace Prize
“for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.”
Nutrition Prize
“for studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.”
Psychology Prize
“for investigating what happens when you tell narcissists—or anyone else—that they are intelligent.”
Engineering Design Prize
“for analyzing, from an engineering design perspective, how foul-smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe-rack.”
One award that deserves particular mention:
Literature Prize
“for persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years.”
So why would this have garnered a ‘literature’ prize? As explained in the Ars Technica coverage:
If you're surprised to see a study on fingernail growth rates under the Literature category, it will all make sense once you read the flowery prose stylings of Dr. Bean [the winner]. He really did keep detailed records of how fast his fingernails grew for 35 years, claiming in his final report that “the nail provides a slowly moving keratin kymograph that measures age on the inexorable abscissa of time.” He sprinkles his observations with ponderous references to medieval astrology, James Boswell, and Moby Dick, with a dash of curmudgeonly asides bemoaning the sterile modern medical teaching methods that permeate “the teeming mass of hope and pain, technical virtuosity, and depersonalization called a ‘health center.’”