The two faces of science: The Nobel and the IgNobel

Science has two faces just like show business and this could not be more apparent than in October every year since 1991 when the IgNobel awards in Harvard were announced right after the Nobel prizes. One face of science looks very serious, recognizing certain fundamental, or very important discoveries in the physical world with the announcement of the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine but not a day or two later, we have the laugh-out-loud face of science upon the release of the winners of the awards that spoof the Nobel – the IgNobel awards (for science that "makes us laugh then makes us think.") which the prestigious science journal Nature called as "arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar."

The IgNobel awards are getting the more hearty reactions from the public which was really okay for the Nobel awardees since they are also invited to be the honored guests at the IgNobel Award ceremonies in Harvard (aside from the fact that the Nobel prize is $1.3 million for each field and the IgNobel award consists of a plaque and applause in the form of paper airplanes). The Nobelets’ works are undoubtedly very important but with all due respect to those great minds, they rate negative in the index of what awakens the rest of the world, except for probably a shipload of Einsteins. The IgNobel this year was especially heartening for one of the 2005 Nobel awardee for Physics, Roy J. Glauber, 80, a professor of physics at Harvard, who gets half of the $1.3 million for "calculations that laid the foundation for quantum optics" since at the IgNobel awards in 1998, he was tasked to sweep paper airplanes onstage. The other half of the $1.3 million will be shared between John L. Hall, 71, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder and at the University of Colorado, and Theodor W. Hänsch, 63, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and a physics professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich for his later work called the "optical frequency comb technique" that uses ultrashort laser pulses to make precise measurements. Suffice it to say that the technical nature of this work is something that is way over our heads but it is work that the scientists assure us, will find itself in technology that we will take for granted one day, such as holographic movies.

While the Physics Nobel went to something so intellectually sophisticated and refined as quantum optics-related work, one of the Physics IgNobels went to something raw and quite explosive. It was on Fluid Dynamics, for work entitled "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh – Calculations on Avian Defecation," where they used basic physics to calculate the pressure inside penguins when Nature starts to call. The IgNobels behind this "explosion" were Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of the International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu, Finland and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary. Please note that the works awarded the IgNobel are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals just like the Nobel works. If you find the Nobel works dubious, please forward your objections to the Nobel Committee where they can only take action after 50 years. It is easy to assume that the Nobel works were published but you may think I am joking about these IgNobel-worthy experiments so I am taking the time to include the journals where they appear. For the penguin pooh calculations, please see Polar Biology vol. 27, 2003, pp. 56-8. Unfortunately though, the march of the penguin pooh pressure experts to the IgNobel stage did not take place because they were refused US visas, which prompted Rochow to say that he hopes that it was not "due to the explosive nature of our work." The other Physics IgNobel went to John Mainstone from Australia for an experiment that began in 1927 in which a glob of black tar drips through a funnel every nine years. Sadly though, Mainstone’s colleague, Thomas Parnell, who shared the prize, died sometime between the second drop and the IgNobel Award ceremonies. Their work is published as The Pitch Drop Experiment in the European Journal of Physics, 1984, pp. 198-200.

The Nobel 2005 for Medicine went to two Australians, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, who were responsible for the discovery that 90 percent of duodenal (intestinal) ulcers and up to 80 percent of gastric (stomach) ulcers are caused by a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori and not stress as it was previously and widely believed. I think Dr. Warren also deserves an IgNobel when I learned from a statement made by his wife in the NY Times that Dr. Warren deliberately swallowed a sample of the said bacteria and became very ill, just to prove his point. But it may be just as well that Warren did not because his IgNobel glory would have been dimmed by the 2005 IgNobel awardee Gregg A. Miller who came up with artificial rubber replacement testicles for neutered dogs, which are available in three sizes and varying degrees of firmness. And for any of my readers who for some reason will be inclined to pirate this invention, please note that the rubber goodies are covered by US Patent #5868140. Miller’s reaction to the award easily eclipsed all the columns I have written trying to encourage young minds to do science. He said, "Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this is a great honor," which should no doubt be an inspiration to young kids wanting to be scientists.

Biology was also covered by the IgNobel this year and it went to the authors of a work that involved smelling and cataloging the strange odors produced by 131 different species of stressed frogs (I have confidence that these mindful scientists controlled for the variable that their smelling the frogs may be causing the stress in the frogs.). For the nosy ones, you can poke your nose at their work entitled "A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions, Their Possible Functions and Phylogenetic Significance," in the journal Applied Herpetology, vol. 2, no. 1-2, Feb. 1, 2004, pp. 47-82.

The Nobel 2005 awardees for Chemistry are Yves Chauvin, 74, retired from the French Petroleum Institute; Robert H. Grubbs, 63, a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology; and Richard R. Schrock, 60, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their work on a process called "metathesis" that revolutionized the manufacture of plastics, drugs and other materials since it is more efficient and environmentally friendly, being faster than the traditional processes, "occurs at lower temperatures, consumes less energy and produces less waste." But for reasons still unknown, Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, did "a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?" published in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal vol. 50, no. 11, October 2004, pp. 2646-7 which earned for them the IgNobel for Chemistry this year.

If there were an IgNobel for entomology (study of insects), it could have gone to Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University in the UK, for hooking up brains of live locusts while they (yes, the locusts) watched selected highlights from the movie Star Wars. But they instead got the IgNobel for Peace which would be a bit of a stretch to figure out since the Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 68, no. 5, November 1992, pp. 1654-66 where their work appears, is hardly the journal you will seek if you are a looking for a breakthrough peace strategy unless it is between armies of locusts.

The IgNobel for Psychology would have been what I guessed for Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that "runs away and hides, repeatedly" but reading further into the wise minds behind the IgNobel as they wrote "…thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday," I decided that it was more than enough justification for the IgNobel for Economics that Nanda received.

There, the two faces of science. May they never snooze nor sleep.

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