The winner for Psychology made me think, for a moment, about HN: "Telling people they are intelligent correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness: The influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism," by Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles E. Gignac. Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... . The entire list is hilarious, and also makes you think. Go read the whole thing!
They should add Avi Loeb PhD powered obsession with the exploding traffic of alien probes crossing our Solar System....
Maybe the Galactic Council just opened a new discount shuttle route over Class 4 Civilizations areas like us: (Non-Fusion, Non-Warp and apparently Non-Skeptical...)
Ig Nobel has been around a while. I wonder if there is an opportunity for them to add a feature whereby they (and donors) could _sponsor_ research in areas that would be considered candidates. Research that would otherwise be too trivial or arcane to be funded.
If you're in the London area at the end of October, the Royal Institution is hosting a special event where "Ig Nobel Prize winners will gather on stage to ask each other questions about their work"
> Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.
> for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
This isn't absurd. It is currently thought that the stripes are NOT for camouflage, since simulated predator vision (such as lions) cannot resolve them. It is believed that one reason for the stripes could be to act as a deterrent against flies (how exactly, not sure).
In this sense, testing whether it works on cows isn't absurd!
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 32.5 ms ] threadMaybe the Galactic Council just opened a new discount shuttle route over Class 4 Civilizations areas like us: (Non-Fusion, Non-Warp and apparently Non-Skeptical...)
https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/ig-nobels-face-face
I thought it was common knowledge?
For example,
> for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
This isn't absurd. It is currently thought that the stripes are NOT for camouflage, since simulated predator vision (such as lions) cannot resolve them. It is believed that one reason for the stripes could be to act as a deterrent against flies (how exactly, not sure).
In this sense, testing whether it works on cows isn't absurd!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45296112
(for /u/DanG to merge)