'Gay bomb' study wins IgNobel

30 Nov -0001, 12:00 am   -   Source: AFP/Reuters
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The IgNobel Prize. Photo: Getty.

The IgNobel Prize. Photo: Getty.

US Air Force scientists who pondered a "gay bomb" which would make enemy soldiers irresistable to each other have won the IgNobel Peace Prize.

US Air Force scientists who pondered a "gay bomb" which would make enemy soldiers irresistable to each other have won the IgNobel Peace Prize.

Researchers who discovered that Viagra helps hamsters overcome jet-lag and others who managed to extract vanilla favoring from cow dung were also honoured with gongs at a US ceremony.

The spoof awards, a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Nobel prizes, celebrate some of the more obscure and bizarre scientific discoveries.

The Igs, as they are known, are chosen by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research to highlight scientific papers that, in the words of the magazine, "first make people laugh and then make them think."

Among the winners were a British-US duo who examined the side effects of sword swallowing -- and discovered it causes sore throats -- and a Spanish team who discovered rats can discriminate between Japanese and Dutch spoken backwards.

Chemical weapon

"It was a surprise, it was the last thing we expected," said Nuria Sebastian-Galles, one of the Barcelona team of scientists, of the findings. The awards, she said, "bring out the freak inside most scientists."

Past winners have included the creator of the plastic pink flamingo, the inventor of an alarm clock that runs and hides and a researcher who reported the first known case of homosexual necrophiliac behavior in the mallard duck.

Research highlighted by this year's awards ranged from a study of how sheets wrinkle and how the word "the" causes headaches for indexes to why humans can't stop eating when presented with an apparently endless bowl of soup.

Also honored was a Taiwanese man who patented a device to net bank robbers.

The prestigious peace prize was given to a US Air Force laboratory for researching what the committee dubbed the "gay bomb" -- a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.

Vanilla flavouring

Japanese researcher Mayu Yamamoto, who received the chemistry Ig, got an additional honor: a local ice cream shop created a new flavor, the "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist," to honor her work extracting vanilla flavouring from cow dung.

The winners were permitted just 60 seconds to give their acceptance speeches, on pain of interruption by an eight-year-old girl, who traditionally signals the time limit by repeatedly shouting "Please stop, I'm bored."

The Ig Nobels have often targeted what are perceived to be wasteful projects and some scientists have complained that the satirical awards unfairly tarnish legitimate research.

However, many researchers welcome the chance to talk about their work.

Seven of the 10 winners this year paid their own way to accept their awards, which were handed out by six real Nobel Laureates.
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