Shucking Oysters: Academic Abstractions
By Alex Allen
Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus. Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage. Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed. Experimental Replication Shows Knives Manufactured from Frozen Human Feces Do Not Work. Whether you get your study published in a peer-recognized journal or win a respected award, science is serious business. It’s about getting noticed and competing for grants. There’s the familiar Nobel Prize and then there’s the Ig Nobel Prize that recognizes a whole other world of science.
Founded in Boston in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor of the satirical magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobels are awarded to studies that “first make you laugh, and then make you think.” One of the 1991 winners was Robert Klark Graham (inventor of shatterproof eye glasses), who received the biology Ig Nobel “for his pioneering development of the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank that accepts donations from Nobellians and Olympians.”
The Repository produced 215 mediocre children between 1980 and 1999. In terms of the donors, one man had falsely claimed to have an IQ of 160; another was the unremarkable son of a Nobel Prize winner; another was an Olympic gold medallist, and only two were Nobelists. Eventually, Graham moved on from the academic elite to the student elite. Fun fact: In 2019, the New York Times published a story about Jeffrey Epstein’s plan to “seed the human race with his DNA” by impregnating 20 women at once at his New Mexico ranch. Where did he get his idea? The Repository for Germinal Choice – to fill the world with genius Epstein offspring.
This year, the 35th Ig Nobels awards had some unique logistics issues. Over half of the 2025 recipients declined to attend the September event and not for a better invite. Wars, visa restrictions, and the scientific research and border policies of Trump’s administration all dampened the frivolity. Having anticipated difficulties with the US ceremony, Abrahams has venues for winners in the coming months in London, Berlin, and Tokyo. And the 2025 Ig Nobel winners are…
The late Dr. William B. Bean was awarded the prize in literature, for obsessively recording and analyzing the rate of growth of his fingernails from 1953 to 1980. “A 35-year observation of the growth of my nails indicates the slowing of growth with increasing age. The average daily growth of the left thumbnail, for instance, has varied from 0.123mm a day during the first part of the study when I was 32 years of age to 0.095mm a day at the age of 67.”
For the nutrition prize, with the odd title, Opportunistic Foraging Strategy of Rainbow Lizards at a Seaside Resort in Togo, researchers from Nigeria, Togo, Italy and France found, like many humans, that the lizards preferred four-cheese pizza. The team “simply wanted to answer the age-old scientific question: What happens when a lizard discovers cheese and carbs?”
A group from Japan took home the biology award for demonstrating that painting cows with black and white stripes did, in fact, lessen the amount of times they were bitten by horse flies. While unpainted cows and cows with black stripes endured upward of 110 bites in 30 minutes, the black-and-white cows suffered fewer than 60 in the same time frame. This non-toxic, pesticide-free technique can improve animal welfare, and provide an eco-friendly alternative to insect repellent.
A pair of American and Israeli researchers won the chemistry award, for their study on whether eating Teflon could be used to increase food volume and help people feel full without adding extra calories. The idea, much like “Teflon Don” is that the material would slip through the digestive system and then simply slide out. The researchers explained how Polytetrafluoroethylene is an ideal way to add substance but not calories. “Civilization has zero calorie drinks but we have not yet made the leap into the realm of zero calorie foods,” they argued.
In physics, a group from Europe were awarded the prize for solving the worldwide crisis of why cheesy pasta sauce sometimes gets lumpy and how to avoid such a catastrophe. Cacio e pepe (black pepper and Pecorino Romano) was the dish on the menu and the research determined the cheese lumped upon reaching 65°C. The secret ratio? Five grams of starch per 200 grams of cheese.
The coveted peace prize went to a German, Dutch and British team who reported that drinking a shot of vodka can sometimes improve a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language. “A small sip seemed to boost confidence without making the words fall apart,” said Dr Fritz Renner, a psychologist at the University of Freiburg. “It’s not like people were transformed into perfect Dutch speakers after a single drink,” added team member British Professor Matt Field, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield.
A worldwide team won the aviation award for studying whether ingesting alcohol can impair Egyptian fruit bats’ ability to fly and also their ability to echolocate. The results? The bats became slow and their echolocation was impaired much like slurring after a few drinks. Bats that binged on the fermented fruit had a “higher risk of colliding with obstacles” the team concluded. I guess they never peer-reviewed the 2010 study, Drinking and Flying: Does Alcohol Consumption Affect the Flight and Echolocation Performance of Phyllostomid Bats? which showed the same results: drunk bats are not good at flying or figuring out whether they are coming or going.
All these studies are a bit weird, but they can open up new avenues for research. Even the most absurd-sounding questions can lead to valuable scientific insights. In the meantime, I’m working on an inter-goal compatibility account to interpret both paradoxes through the lens of inter-goal interactions, which is an intuitively critical yet under explored factor in existing interpretations.
