Posted on 10/04/2008 5:16:49 AM PDT by Man50D
What are researchers at the nation's most prominent universities up to these days?
One Ivy League college, Harvard University, held a ceremony Thursday awarding researchers for studying fertility of exotic dancers, plant dignity, enhanced potato chip crunch, flea jumping abilities and spermicidal uses for Coca-Cola.
The Annals of Public Research magazine honored Professor Deborah Anderson of Boston University's School of Medicine with an Ig Nobel prize for proving the popular soda could be used for contraception, the Associated Press reported. The ceremony was held at Harvard.
Anderson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, had her study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985. She told the AP she does not advise people to use the soda in place of birth control, but she said she is honored to receive the award for chemistry.
"We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," she said.
Nobel laureates attended the event and honored Anderson and her lab colleagues for making the odd discovery. They also gave awards for other peculiar studies.
Geoffrey Miller, associate professor of pyschology at the University of New Mexico, a publicly funded college, earned an economics prize for leading a team of researchers to discover exotic dancers increase their earning potential when they are most fertile.
When he conducted an experiment using 18 exotic dancers, Miller said they regularly earned $250 for five hours of work. However, their income increased to $350 or $400 for the same shift with changes in fertility.
According to a Network World report, Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy, and Charles Spence of Oxford University were given the nutrition award for electronically enhancing the crunch of potato chips to trick people into believing they were not stale.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
LOL - What good is a thread like this, without PICS?
My high school guidance counselor never suggested this.
Here ya go: '-)
Probably funded by a federal grant
So, you pay for it, and you pay to finance it.
Nice, eh?
Thanks Congress, thanks President Bush.
John McCain and Obama also support this.
So, you pay for it, and you pay to finance it.
Nice, eh?
Thanks Congress, thanks President Bush.
John McCain and Obama also support this.
The IgNoble prizes are always a lot of fun.
Cheers!
So, Coke not only rots stomachs and teeth, it also rots ladies’ special places?
I wonder if she got the idea from Saturday Night Live: season 1, episode 17.
Cheers!
Wow - to do this and get paid for it? What a past time!!
This writer is a moron who can't tell the difference between a "discovery" and a "proof" of an existing hypothesis. It has been in the public sphere that Coca Cola can be used as a spermicide since at least the 1950's. Professor Anderson appears to be the first professional to take this urban legend seriously enough to make an attempt to confirm its veracity. Professor Anderson did not "discover" that Coca Cola can be utilized as a spermicide, she just verified that it can be used as such.
sounds sticky
There's a fine line between this type of research and...
And guess who's "striving to get her PhD."
(Unless she was born with it, she deserves extra credit for picking that name.)
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