Noble or Nobel?

18th October 2024

We crawl (not rattle or gallop) towards the half term break. There are some staff, pupils and students working in our schools or college, who have not had a decent break for eight, nine, even ten weeks. That’s a long old haul in our world, or in any working world. Thank you for your patience and support as we move towards the October break.

I thought, but for a fleeting moment, that I might focus on the Nobel awards, which have been announced and awarded over the past few weeks. These prestigious internationally recognised awards acknowledge the success of individuals and teams across the whole range of academic disciplines, peace and literature. Then again upon reflection and having considered things a little more carefully. I realise that, at this time of year, that might be a little too heavy or too deep for this Friday. As a consequence, I am going to share with you some of the headline winners at this year’s Ig Nobel awards. The alternative awards which recognise scientific achievement, which may not be ‘mainstream’, and were held at an auspicious ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the other week.

How about these for real scientific achievement and innovation? Some of the headlines include:

In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The Japanese researchers became interested in whether humans with breathing difficulties might benefit from having oxygen pumped up their backsides after noting that some animals, such as loaches, can use their intestines to breathe. They began the work in the Covid crisis when many hospitals were desperately short of mechanical ventilators to support breathing in people with severe infections. The team’s experiments, which earned the Ig Nobel prize in physiology, showed that mice, rats and pigs could absorb oxygen into the bloodstream when it was delivered via the rectum, thus supporting normal breathing.

UK investigators found that claims of extreme old age tend to come from areas of the world that have short average lifespans and (importantly) a historical lack of birth certificates; so, you just make up how old you are!

A French study found that scalp hair tends to grow in a clockwise direction, though less so in the southern hemisphere.

The other winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel prizes include:

Peace
Awarded to the late BF Skinner, a US psychologist, for exploring the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles (warheads) to guide them to their targets. The project, which Skinner himself described as “crackpot” was dropped despite a perfect demonstration involving a pigeon trained to target features on the New Jersey coastline. “The spectacle of a living pigeon carrying out its assignment, no matter how beautifully, simply reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was,” Skinner wrote.

Botany
Given to Jacob White in the US and Felipe Yamashita in Germany for reporting evidence that the South American plant Boquila trifoliolata can mimic the leaves of a plastic plant it is placed alongside, leading them to conclude that “plant vision” is a plausible hypothesis.

Medicine
Won by a Swiss, German and Belgian group for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective in patients than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.

Physics
Awarded to James Liao at the University of Florida for a comprehensive investigation into the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

Chemistry
A win for the Netherlands, with a team in Amsterdam using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms, all in the name of polymer science.

Biology
Another posthumous award, the Ig Nobel in biology honoured the late Fordyce Ely and William Petersen for their 1940 investigation into factors affecting the production of milk in dairy herds. Writing in the Journal of Animal Science, the pair recounted placing a cat on the back of a cow and repeatedly exploding paper bags to see if milk-flow changed. The terrified cows appeared to release less milk. “Frightening at first consisted in placing a cat on the cow’s back and exploding paper bags every 10 seconds for two minutes,” the researchers wrote. “Later the cat was dispensed with as unnecessary.”

And all that was in the name of serious science, by serious scientists, researchers and academics. We tip our hats to the scientists.