Ig Nobels 2010 applaud foreplay of fruit bats and collection of whale snot

by Steven Mostyn - Oct 1 2010, 13:08

The positively bizarre act of ‘roller-coaster therapy’ has become just one of this year’s winners at the Ig Nobel awards ceremony at Harvard University, which is held annually to recognise the most unusual and often hilarious research conducted across various fields of science, medicine and technology.

Doled out by science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, a group of scientists from Holland took the Medicine prize after they discovered that “positive emotional stress” gathered by riding on a heart-pounding roller-coaster actually reduced breathing difficulties in asthma sufferers.

The Public Health prize was awarded to a U.S. team that uncovered the icky fact that scientists with beards pose a risk to family members because laboratory bacteria often remains attached to their hair follicles despite attempts to shampoo it out.

The Peace award was scooped by researchers from Keele University in the United Kingdom who claimed that letting loose a stream of expletives can reduce the effect of pain. Plunging the hands of volunteers into icy water, the team found that those repeating a swear word aloud were able to keep their hands submerged for longer.   

Other winners included the University of Bristol (Biology prize), which studied the foreplay of fruit bats and discovered the creatures use oral sex to prolong intercourse, and the Zoological Society of London (Engineering prize), which perfected a method of collecting whale snot samples by using a remote control helicopter.

“We like to think that the Ig Nobels make the Nobels shine even more brightly,” quipped Annals of Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams, who also hosted the awards.

“For good or its opposite, humanity is producing more and stronger candidates every year and this is especially true of Britain,” he added in reference to the above research topics emanating from across the pond.

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