Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Posted by mkl 3 days ago

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Some great winners this time, personal favorite:

> IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>

Comment by dinfinity 3 days ago

It's not really a surprise that less ethical people on average are richer than ethical people. Sad, but logical: they more often choose selfishly and thus amass more money.

This is the correct direction of causation in this case, imho.

Comment by underlipton 3 days ago

Is it? Wealth is used as a proxy for virtue, and has been for a long time. "Nobility" has two meanings, after all. Why the same word, if not the same root sentiment? Unless one definition was originally meant sarcastically.

Comment by zorked 3 days ago

Is it?

  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  [I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

This guy is pretty influential in at least half the globe.

Comment by underlipton 2 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49582188

That's at least one sector of the Christian world that ignores that line. I don't think they're alone. You also have other etymological canaries like "fortune" meaning both "wealth" and "blessing". The thinking is that good things happen to good people, with "good things" including "coming into money". But, as we see, that seems to be erroneous. Just because good things happen to a person doesn't mean that they're good.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by mdp2021 1 day ago

You are reading the term too literally.

(And by the way, you are using a severely outdated translation.)

Comment by conception 2 days ago

It definitely benefits those with power to have it being considered such. Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

Comment by dinfinity 2 days ago

You're countering logic rooted in psychology and economics with etymology and linguistics?

How does "ancient people consider the wealthy virtuous" cancel out "selfish people tend to make more money"?

Comment by underlipton 2 days ago

You presented it as something we should have known, because it's logical (and it is). But the problem is that we apparently don't know it, and haven't for some time. It appears as if (part of) humanity has gotten it wrong for so long that it's written into our language.

Comment by dinfinity 1 day ago

Nonsense. The logic based on etymology doesn't show that at all. Most people alive right have never even used the word "nobility", let alone do they let their worldview be defined by it.

They may have used the word "noble", but very probably did not link that to wealth.

Comment by mdp2021 1 day ago

> Most people alive... have never even used the word... let alone do they let their worldview be defined by it

Support your statements, show it. Most people alive would have not been informed on basic ethics, nor basic language?!

Comment by dinfinity 1 day ago

I made and supported my initial claim. The burden of proof here is on the person who claimed that the etymology of "nobility" somehow disproves my initial claim.

Comment by mdp2021 19 hours ago

> my initial claim

Not your initial claim: the claim of the median human not being aware of basic dictionary and ethics.

Of course psychopathy as lack of restraint facilitates amassing riches.

To state the absence of family and schools and contact with books for a majority indicates a weird world view, or an impossibility to put heterogeneous populations in the same basket.

Comment by underlipton 23 hours ago

You're making a lot of assumptions, not least of which is that "noble" is the only word linking material wealth and intrinsic goodness. See also "fortune", "blessing", "worth", "value", "credit". Consider also the opposite, like "destitution" (material or moral).

To be clear, I am saying that the link these words connote is wrong, and that it's indeed logical to expect a wealthy person to be selfish. I'm just saying that something drove our culture to forego that logic and make the erroneous link described, and it's written in our language. I can't tell you where that link comes from.

Comment by dinfinity 22 hours ago

I think this is stretching it quite a bit.

I can go along with us having the tendency to determine the value of things in terms of money, but not with determining how virtuous somebody in terms of wealth. The former is morally neutral (even though it does pull society away from thinking in terms of what actually matters to wellbeing etc.), the latter isn't.

None of the examples you mentioned equate wealth with virtue/ethical behavior. "Nobility" does to an extent.

With regard to modern day connotations of wealth: I'd say that most people associate it with either luck or being savvy in some way; definitely not with ethical behavior.

Comment by tontonius 3 days ago

Wait, what does nobility mean other than aristocracy?

Comment by mdp2021 1 day ago

> what does nobility mean other than aristocracy

"Noble" means "known". "Aristos" means "best" (best fit). The "noble" (the notables) are empowered ("-cracy") for being the best ("aristos").

Moral qualities, practical abilities, enabling the exercise of a role in society.

Comment by sparky_z 3 days ago

You've never heard something selfless and good described as "noble"?

Comment by VyseofArcadia 3 days ago

This one feels like it deserves more than just an Ig Nobel.

Comment by Tomte 3 days ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567241

Comment by zdragnar 3 days ago

Far more or far less? The study is so profoundly flawed that it should be in a hall of shame, along with whatever journal published it.

Comment by howunfortunate 3 days ago

I knew immediately this was BS, sure enough, someone already beat me to it with the comment explaining why.

Man, I'm so ashamed of my field (experimental psychology). Maybe ~60% of publications are literally worse than useless (that is, they are outright intentional lies).

Comment by bethekidyouwant 3 days ago

The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why anyone would even bother engaging with (experimental psychology)

Comment by howunfortunate 3 days ago

If you have a Ph.D. you can somewhat sort the wheat from the chaff. But it's 100% not worth it for the layman. Better to just ignore it.

That's why, even though it's incredibly sad to see, I can hardly begrudge the current administration their "defund anything and everything using keyword search". Since they can't trust the experts, that's really about the best that can be done from their perspective.

Comment by analog31 2 days ago

The ones who are vetting these articles have PhDs.

Disclosure: PhD

Comment by howunfortunate 2 days ago

Oh, I know.

There are many reasons why peer review doesn't work including but not limited to (1) motivated reasoning AKA complicity in whatever lie is being pushed (2) no real incentive to put effort into peer review (3) laziness and irresponsibility, see also point 2 (4) the "somewhat" qualifier I put in my original comment.

I'm being critical of peer reviewers here, but it's a genuinely very difficult job that takes massive effort to do well.

And then there's actual malpractice like editing data, which is functionally impossible to catch in peer review if the authors are clever. The whole system replies on trust, and trust is completely underserved.

Comment by dwattttt 3 days ago

Are you impugning the good name of the Ig Noble awards? For shame!

Comment by peter_d_sherman 3 days ago

>"But this year’s winning team didn’t go the robot route; instead, they adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. [...] The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips."

Strangely, this idea has at least a small amount of merit... The idea that an organic, carbon-based structure (in the above case, a mosquito proboscis -- but it could have been a separate, non-living individually 3D printed from organic materials, organic part) would make a good 3D print head with exceedingly fine resolution, is not a terrible idea!

(Note that for the record, I do not endorse killing mosquitos, or any other insect to make 3D print heads, or really, anything else!)

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

FWIW IgNoble award winners aren't inherently bad projects. Some are bad research but the winners tend to be projects that just sound weird or stupid but have legitimately research value.

Comment by adw 3 days ago

The famous levitating frog guy has the double; one Nobel, one IgNobel.

Comment by varjag 3 days ago

A paper am a coauthor of uses an Ig Nobel winning article as a reference. Because in fact it was a serious piece of research with practical implications.

Comment by conception 2 days ago

They all are serious research.

Comment by varjag 2 days ago

Sure but it’s certainly not the messaging of IgNobel

Comment by dguest 15 hours ago

IgNobel has evolved. Years ago their tag line was that they were for research "that cannot or should not be reproduced". Now it's to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".

Over the years they went from being a prize for joke science to a prize for serious science that is funny.

Comment by sandworm101 3 days ago

Are they still using the little girl?

THAT invention deserves its own ignoble category for contribution to public discord.

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA

Comment by mkl 3 days ago

The official list is at https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 but Ars Technica has a lot more detail.

Comment by cfn 3 days ago

I like that so many of the winners attended the ceremony, one should never take yourself too seriously.

Comment by magneticnorth 3 days ago

It wasn't clear to me in the article, but the best splash-free urinal ("nautilus"), is the tall skinny one second-from-right in the photo.

In addition to having the correct angle to minimize splash, it also fits a wide range of heights and is easier to clean than some of the other designs they tried.

Comment by jmclnx 3 days ago

>The 36th ceremony took place on September 3rd in the Congress Center of Zurich, Switzerland, and was hosted by the University of Zurich and ETH Domain, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests.

Another loss for the US thanks to Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize

Also, every political speech needs a "Miss Sweetie Poo".

Comment by abirch 3 days ago

The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why any other NATO nation would buy any weapons from the USA.

Comment by Loughla 3 days ago

They buy our weapons because we make a shit ton of them. We're not great at a lot of things, but manufacturing weapons for mass slaughter is up towards the top of our specialties.

Comment by 3eb7988a1663 3 days ago

This is likely to change. The US has said that previously agreed arms shipments may be now delayed, because the US is cutting in line to restock their own supplies first.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by D-Coder 3 days ago

This article had me at pneumotachometers (emphasis mine):

> Unno used a pair of pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases) in parallel for his experiments to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.