Overview
- The 36th Ig Nobel ceremony, held Sept. 3 in Zurich, presented ten prizes that spotlight curiosity-driven research that “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.”
- Winners included a chemistry team that found viviparous cockroach milk proteins pack about three times the energy of cow milk proteins and a soil‑science citizen project that buried 1,000 identical cotton underpants in more than 25 countries to measure decomposition as a proxy for soil health.
- Other highlighted studies awarded prizes were a new, low‑splash urinal design called the Nautilus, a cross‑species, biomechanics definition of kissing based on oral‑oral contact, and a posthumous medicine prize for a 1977 aerodynamic study on nose‑blowing.
- Organizers confirmed the move from the U.S. to improve access for international winners and reporters and said one biology paper honored this year has since been retracted over concerns about the treatment of animals, underscoring tension between playful public engagement and scientific rigor.
- The awards are run by the Annals of Improbable Research and keep theatrical traditions—paper airplanes and Nobel laureates on stage—while signaling a shift in location policy after 35 years in the United States and offering a public window into how odd or small studies can inform bigger scientific questions.