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Congratulations are in order, kind of, for a few exemplary researchers and one massive multinational corporation.

 — the rather-less-noble-than-the-Nobel awards for "improbable" research and accomplishments — were announced Thursday night.



The honorees included a man who lived as a goat, a man who lived as a badger, a man who put tiny pants on rats and tracked their sex lives, a team who investigated the personalities of rocks, and Volkswagen.

achievements that make people LAUGH, and then THINK

the science humor magazine that doles out the awards, puts it.


Most of the awards were grin-inducing. There was the Perception Prize, for Japanese researchers who investigated "whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs."

"From Junior to Senior Pinocchio" won the Psychology Prize. The research explores how liars lie over lifetimes — based on the liars' descriptions of their own lie frequency.

The Physics Prize was shared between scientists who discovered "why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses," and those who uncovered "why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones."


And the rock personas? That was the Economics Prize, given to marketing theorists who explored how people 

rocks, you know, personality-wise.
Many of the studies are actual peer-reviewed research projects that are more significant or interesting than they might appear at first glance. At least one had obvious utility: the research that won the Medicine Prize by demonstrating that an itch can be scratched without touching it, if you 

But one of the Ig Nobels was particularly ignoble: the Chemistry Prize, awarded to Volkswagen "for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions," the award-givers noted sarcastically. (VW, of course, cheated on emissions tests to disguise the fact that supposedly low-emission cars were quite the opposite.)


No one from the company attended the awards ceremony, according to 

Several of the recipients might be familiar to NPR fans. We've profiled them before — which may testify either to the good taste of the Ig Nobel committee or the questionable judgment of this network.

You might recall the "goat man," Thomas Thwaites, who built a special suit that made him ... goat-y. He shared the Biology Prize with a man who lived "in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird."


"Human life can just be so difficult," Thwaites 

 a few months ago. "And you look at a goat and it's just, you know, it's free. It doesn't have any concerns."
And he 

 blog that goats aren't great conversationalists. "They're much more about smell and body posture," he said.



In the realm of literature, Fredrik Sjöberg was honored "for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead."

recommended by NPR Books editor Petra Mayer

 as a top pick for the summer. "It's a memoir by a Swedish entomologist who lives on a tiny island — but it sort of defies summary, because you read it and he's so funny and he's so observant and his wit is so dry, you want to go hunting flies with him."
And the author 

 about his work and his book. "It's more or less difficult to make an impression on people with flies, but there are a few people around the world that really got impressed," he said.

The Peace Prize went to scientists who explored how good — or bad — people are at identifying "pseudo-profound bullshit," a project that inspired Tania Lombrozo to 

 about the "special expertise and some confidence" required to tell the profound from the preposterous.


And then, of course, there are the rat pants.



NPR didn't speak to the now-deceased Dr. Ahmed Shafik about his project — which earned him a posthumous Reproduction Prize — but his work came up 

Here's a relevant excerpt from Roach's book:


If you have someone in mind for next year's Ig Nobel awards, you can 

 by email or snail mail. The satirical magazine says the award is "quite possibly" an honor.
The prizes are handed out by "genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates," 

Science

Camila Domonoske

Author

Remember the guy who built a special suit to live like a goat? He, too, won an Ig Nobel this year. The prize celebrates eccentric, often amusing research and accomplishments.

Ig Nobel Awards given for rat pants, fly catchers and rocks with personalities

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