Humour
Jokes of scientists
The IgNobel Prize
How do they make it ?

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Go to year : 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008

IgNobel 1991 :
Chemistry : Jacques Benveniste for his work about the memory of water.
Medicine : Alan Kligerman for his work about the anti-gaz liquids, which can avoid farts.
Education : J. Danforth Quayle for having used time and space, and shown that education is useful.
Biology : Robert Clark Graham for the creation of a bank of sperm only for Nobel prizes and Olympic champions.
Economics : Michael Milken for having made thousands of people getting into debt.
Literature : Erich von Däniken, writer of Floats of Gods, for his discovery of the influence on the humans of antic extraterrestrial astronauts.
Peace : Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, for having during all his life changed the meaning of the word « peace ».
Physics : Thomas M. Kyle for the discovery of the Administratium, the biggest chimical element in the world, with one neutro, eight assistant neutros, 35 co-neutros and 256 assistant co-neutros.

IgNobel 1992 :
Medicine : F. Kanda, E. Yagi, M. Fukuda, K. Nakajima, T. Ohta and O. Nakata for their work about the molecules that are responsible for the smells of the feet.
Archaeology : Les Eclaireurs de France, for having erased the prehistoric paints of Meyrières.
Economics : The investors of the Lloyd's of London for their try to insurance the disastre by not paying the losses of the company.
Biology : Cecil Jacobson for the creation of a system for the control of the hand, in relation with the banks of sperm.
Chemistry : Ivette Bassa for the synthesis of the light blue jelly.
Physics : David Chorley and Doug Bower for their contributions to the theory of Fields, based on the geometrical destruction of english cultivations.
Peace : Daryl Gates, police-chief of Los Angeles, for his method to assemble people (after the riots in Los Angeles in 1992).
Nutrition : the eaters of corned-beef for 54 years of digestion.
Literature : Yuri Struchkov for the 948 scientist papers that he published between 1982 and 1990, which represent in average one paper every 3.9 days.
Arts : Jim Knowlton for his anatomic poster, The penis of animal beings, and the national foundation for Arts, for having encouraged Mr Knowlton to pursue his work with an animated book.

IgNobel 1993 :
Psychology : John Mack and David Jacobs for their researches about alien adbuctions.
Engineering of the consumption : Ron Popeil, a TV presenter, for having given a new definition to the industrial revolution, with objects like the Veg-o-matic.
Biology : Paul Williams Jr.and Kenneth W. Newell for their study about the salmonella in the excrements of pigs in travel.
Economics : Ravi Batra, writer of The big depress of 1990 and Fight the big depress of 1990, for having so many books that she could avoid herself the collapse of global economy.
Peace : Pepsi-Cola Philippines, because they sponsorised a game to make somebody millionaire, gave a wrong number of winner, unified 800,000 winners in the protest and collected many armed groups for the first time in the country.
Futuristic technology : Jay Schiffman, inventor of a projection system which permits us to drive a car while watching TV, and the legislators of the Michigan who made it legal.
Chemistry : James Campbell and Gaines Campbell for the invention of smellt strips, without what we couldn't apply a smell to a magazine.
Literature : E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong and their 972 co-writers, for the publication of a research paper that has 100 times more writers than pages.
Mathematics : Robert Faid who calculated the exact chances that Mikhaïl Gorbatchev could be the Antechrist.
Physics : Louis Kervran for his conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggs is created by a process of cold fusion.
Medicine : James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell and John P. Sands Jr. for Right gestion of a penis which is in a zipper.

IgNobel 1994 :
Biology : W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton and Wayne Hansen for their study about the constipation in the US army.
Peace : John Hagelin for his experimentam conclusion that 4,000 trained arbitrators could reduce the criminality of 18% in Washington DC.
Medicine : A patient X for his use of electrochocs after a snake's bite (a candle has been attached to his lip and the motor of the car turned 3,000 times every minute during 5 minutes) and Richard C. Dart and Richard A. Gustafson for their mediacl report The uselessness of electrochocs against the venom of bell's snakes.
Entomology : Robert A. Lopez for his experiments about ear's mite of cats, that he injected in his own ears to observ the effects.
Psychology : Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Ministre of Singapour, for his study durig 30 years about the effects of punishment on three millions of citizens when they chewed some chewing-gum or gave food to pigeons.
Literature : L. Ron Hubbard, fondator of the Scientology, for The Dianetic, a very useful book for the humanity (or one of its parts).
Chemistry : Bob Glasgow, senator of Texas, for the law about the drugs' control which make it illegal to buy laboratory glasses.
Economics : Jan Pablo Davila for the loss of 0.5 % of the chilian GNB and the creation of a new verb, « davilar », which means « completely lose ».
Mathematics : The southern baptist church of Alabama for its estimation of the number of citizens who should go to hell without repentance.

IgNobel 1995 :
Nutrition : John Martinez for the most expensive coffee in the world, produced with seeds that are consumed and spitted by a bird.
Physics : D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker and A.C. Smith for their analyse of soak breakfast's cereals.
Economics : Nick Leeson, his chiefs in the bank of Barings and Robert Citron for having used the derivates in the demonstration that every financial institution is limited.
Medicine : Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa and Michael R. Boyle for The effects of the forced respiration by only one nostril on knowledges.
Literature : David B. Busch and James R. Starling for Rectal strange corps : study of cases and detail of the global litterature.
Peace : the national parlament of Taïwan who showed that politicians earn more when they fight themself than when they make war to other countries.
Psychology : Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto and Masumi Wakita, who taught to pigeons to make the difference between a painting of Picasso and one of Monet.
Public health : Martha Kold Bakkevig and Ruth Nielson for The impact of soak undergarments on the thermical regulation and the comfort in cold..
Dental medicine : Robert H. Beaumont for The preferences of the patient : oilskin or unoilskin teeth thread.
Chemistry : Bijan Pakzad for the creation of Cologne's water and DNA perfum, which don't contain desoxyribo-nucleic acid but are both sold in a bottle with the shape of DNA.

IgNobel 1996 :
Biology : Anders Barheim and Hogne Sandvik for The effets of beer, garlic and sour cream on the appetite of bloodsuckers.
Medicine : James Johnston, Joseph Taddeo, Andrew Tisch, William Campbell, Edward A. Horrigan, Donald S. Johnston and Thomas E. Sandefur Jr., all members of tobacco firms, for the discovery that nicotin doesn't cause any dependance.
Physics : Robert Matthews for his studies on the Murphy's law.
Peace : Jacques Chirac, French president, who tested a nuclear bomb the day of the 50th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima.
Public health : Ellen Kleist and Harald Moi for Transmission of the gonorrhoea by inflatable dolls.
Chemistry : George Goble for his world's record of lighting of barbecue, three seconds, by using carbon and liquid oxygen.
Biodiversity : Chonosuke Okamura for the discovery of fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons, princesses and more than 1,000 other dead species, all having a length of less than a quarter of millimeter.
Literature : the editors of Social text, for the publication of researches that they didn't understand, from which the author said that they had no meaning and which explained that reality doesn't existe.
Economics : Dr. Robert J. Genco for the discovery that economical tensions announce some destructive diseases.
Arts : Don Featherstone for the invention of the pink flamingo in plastic.

IgNobel 1997 :
Biology : T. Yagyu and his colleagues for the mesurement of the cerebral activity while chewing different types of chewing-gums.
Entomology : Mark Hostetler for This pulp on your car, book that explain how to identify impacts of insects on the windshield.
Astronomy : Richard Hoagland for the identification of a human face on Mars and some 15 kilometers high skyscrapers on the hidden side of the Moon.
Communication : Sanford Wallace for the transmission of pourriel on all the planet.
Physics : John Bockris pour his success in the domains of cold fusion and transmutation of gold.
Literature : Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, Yoav Rosenberg and Michael Drosnin for their statistic discovery that the Bible hides a secret code.
Medicine : Carl J. Charnetski, Francis X. Brennan Jr. and James F. Harrison, of the Muzak Ltd. company, for the discovery that the listening of Muzak's elevator's music stimulates the production of immunoglobine A and then can fight the cold.
Economics : Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita, parents of the Tamagochi, for the occupation of millions of hours to take care of virtual animals.
Peace : Harold Hillman for The possible pain during the execution by different methods.
Meteorology : Bernard Vonnegut for The mesurement of the speed of winds in the tornados by using chickens' plucks.

IgNobel 1998 :
Ingeneering and security : Troy Hurtubise for the invention and the personal test of a protection against grizzlys.
Biology : Peter Fong for his contribution to good feeling of clams with Prozac.
Peace : Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime minister of India, and Nawaz Sharif, Prime minister of Pakistan, for their pacific explosions of atomic bombs.
Chemistry : Jacques Benveniste for his discovery that the water has a memory, but that we also could transmit informations with the phone or Internet.
Education : Dolores Krieger for her demonstration of the importance of the therapeutic contact, in which the doctors manipulate the energic fields of the patients and avoid every contact with them.
Statistics : Jerald Bain and Kerry Siminoski for The relation between height, feet's size and length of the penis.
Physics : Deepak Chopra for her interpretation of quantic physic, applied to life, freedom and the pursue of economical happiness.
Economics : Richard Seed for his try to maintain the global economy by cloning himself.
Medicine : A patient X and his doctos, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly and Peter Holt for A man who pricked his finger and has emitted a putrid smell for 5 years..
Literature : The doctor Mara Sidoli for To fart : a defense against unavowable fears.

IgNobel 1999 :
Sociology : Steve Penfold for his study about the sociology of the canadian shops of donouts.
Physics : Dr Len Fisher for the calcul of the best method to soak a biscuit et Pr Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck for the calcul of how to make a nozzle of teapot that doesn't drip.
Literature : The british institue of standardisation for its specification in six pages on the good way to make a cup of tea.
Education : The offices of education of Kansas and Colorado which indicated that children shouldn't believe in the Darwin's theory of evolution, the Newton's theory of the gravitation, the Maxwell's and Faraday's theory of electromagnetism and the Pasteur's theory about microbes.
Medicine : Dr Arvid Vatle for its collection and classification of the recipients that his patients chose to bring their samples of urine.
Chemistry : Takeshi Makino for his work to make a detection spray of infidelity, that women could put in their husbands' clothes.
Biology : Paul Bosland for the creation of a chilian pepper without spices.
Protection of the environment : Hyuk-ho Kwon for the invention of a perfumed suit.
Peace : Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong for the invention of an alarm against steals of cars, equiped with a flame thrower.
Hygiene : George and Charlotte Blonsky for their system that helps women to give birth, by fixing them to a circular table in high-speed rotation.

IgNobel 2000 :
Psychology : David Dunning and Justin Kreuger for Incompetent and unconscious to be : how the difficulty to admit its own incompetence leads to a overvaluation of oneself.
Literature : Jasmuheen for Live with light in which she explains that even if some people eat food, they don't really need it.
Biology : Richard Wassersug for Comparison of the taste of tadpoles in the dry season in Costa Rica.
Physics : Andre Geim and Sir Michael Berry for the use of magnets to make a frog levitate.
Chemistry : Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, Giovanni B. Cassano and Hagop S. Akiskal for the discovery that with a chemical point of view, romantic love is a compulsive obsessional disorder.
Economics : Sun Myung Moon who gave efficiency and growing to the industry of weddings with, according to his numbers, the wedding of 36 couples in 1960, 430 in 1968, 1,800 in 1975, 6,000 in 1982, 30,000 in 1992, 360,000 in 1995 and 36 millions in 1997.
Medicine : Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, Eduard Mooyaart and Ida Sabelis for IRM of the male and female sexual organs during the coitus and the female sexual excitation.
Computer science : Chris Niswander for the creation of a software that detects if a cat is walking on the keyboard of the computer.
Peace : the British Royal Marine which gave to his men the order not to use real shells anymore, and to just shout « Bang ! ».
Public health : Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullet for The affaisement of toilets in Glasgow.

IgNobel 2001 :
Medicine : Peter Barss for its mediacl report on hurts after the fall of coconuts.
Physics : David Schmidt for his partial explanation of why the shower curtains inflate to the inside.
Biology : Buck Weimer for the invention of tight undergarments equipped with a carbon to absorbent tha gazes.
Economics : Joel Slemrod and Wojciech Kopczuk fur their conclusion that people generally find a way to report their death if it can give them a diminution of taxes.
Literature : John Richards, fondator of the society to protect the apostrophize, for his efforts to protect and advertise the differences between plural and possessive.
Psychology : Lawrence W. Sherman for An ecological study of jubilation in little groups of pre-scolar children.
Astrophysics : Jack and Rexella Van Impe for the discovery that the black holes have all the required qualities to shelter the Hell.
Peace : Viliumas Malinauskus for the creation of a park of attractions named « The world of Staline ».
Technology : John Keogh who patented the coil in 2001 and the Australian offices of patents which gave him a patent of innovation.
Publique health : Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari for the discovery that the clean of the nose is a normal activity for the teenagers.

IgNobel 2002 :
Biology : Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers and D. Charles Deeming for Nuptial attitude of ostriches with the humans in the agricultural conditions in Great-Britain.
Physics : Arnd Leike for Demonstration of the application of the law of exponential degradation in the foam of beer.
Multidisciplinary research : Karl Kruszelnicki for Complete investigation about the hairs of navel.
Chemistry : Theo Gray for the assembly of many of the elements of the periodic table in the form of a table with four feet.
Mathematics : K. P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan for their estimation of the total surface of the Indian elephant.
Literature : David S. Kreiner for « The effects of pre-existing unappropriated underlines on the understanding of reading ».
Peace : Keita Sato, Matsumi Suzuki and Norio Kogure for the creation of an automatic translator between human and dog.
Hygiene : Eduardo Segura for the invention of a wash-machine for dogs and cats.
Economics : a lot of companies for their adaptation of the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers to the financial world.
Medicine : Chris McManus for « The scrotale asymmetry of mens in the old statues ».

IgNobel 2003 :
Ingeneering : John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy Jr. and George Nichols for the formulation in 1949 of the Murphy's law.
Physics : Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart and Robyn Williams, for Analysis of the needed forces to trail a sheep on different surfaces.
Medicine : Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona bon, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak and Christopher Frith for the discovery that the brains of the taxi-drivers in London are bigger than those of the other people.
Literature : John Trinkaus for the edition of more than 80 detailed reports about things that disturbed him, like :
   the number of pedestrians who wear white shoes rather than an other color ;
   the number of swimmers who drink the cup in the less deep side of a swimming-pool ;
   the number of drivers who almost, but not completely, stop when they see a stop signal ;
   the number of people with suit-cases ;
   the number of customers who deliberately exceed the number of authorized articles in the line of a supermarket ;
   the number of students who hate the taste of Brussels sprout.
Chemistry : Yukio Hirose for his investigations on a rule of bronze that doesn't attract pigeons.
Economics : Karl Schwärzler and the State of Liechtenstein who made it possible to rent the all country for congresses, weddings, ...
Multidisciplinary research : Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson and Magnus Enquist for The chickens prefer beautiful humans.
Peace : Lal Bihari for having lead an active life whereas he was officially dead in 1976, for having lead a baited posthumous campaign against the bureaucracy and for having created the association of dead people.
Psychology : Gian Vittorio Caprara, Claudio Barbaranelli and Philip Zimbardo for The simple spirits of politicians.

IgNobel 2004 :
Medicine : Steven Stack and James Gundlach for The effect of the country music on suicides..
Physics : Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael Turley for their explanations of the dynamics of hula hoop.
Hygiene : Jillian Clarke for his investigation on the « five seconds » rule and the question to eat some food that felt.
Chemistry : Coca-Cola Great-Britain, which transformed water of the Tamise to Danasi, a mineral water in bottle.
Ingeneering : Donald J. and Frank J. Smith who patented a method of haircut permitting bald people to use a few hair to hide their baldness.
Literature : The American Nudist Research Library for the preservation of the nudist history « in order that everyone can see it ».
Psychology : Daniel Simon and Christopher Chabris who showed that then people are concentrated on something, it's easy to forget the remainder, included a woman disguised in ape.
Economics : the Vatican for the subcontracting of prays in India.
Peace : Daisuke Inoue for the invention of karaoke, method for people to learn the tolerance.
Biology : Ben Wilson, Lawrence Dill, Robert Batty, Magnue Wahlberg and Hakan Westenberg for their demonstration of the communication of herrings by the middle of farts.

IgNobel 2005 :
History of agriculture : James Watson for The meaning of the explosive pants of Mr Richard Buckley : thoughts about an aspect of the technologic changes in New-Zealand between the two world wars.
Physics : John Mainstone and Thomas Parnell who observed the drainage of iced tar in a funnel, one drip every nine years, since 1927.
Medicine : Gregg A. Miller for the invention of artificial replacement for dogs' testicles.
Literature : the « Nigerian » swindlers for their inventiveness in the creation of fictive characters to steal money.
Peace : Claire Rind and Peter Simmons for the study of the cerebral activity of a grasshopper while it was looking at « Star wars ».
Economics : Gauri Nanda for the invention of an alarm clock that can with repetition run and hide to be sure that you wake up.
Chemistry : Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger for Do people swim faster in syrup or in water ?
Biology : Benjamin Smith, the firm Firmenich (perfums), ChemComm Enterprises, Craig Williams, Michael Tyler, Brian Williams and Yoji Hayasaka for the classification of the smells of 131 species of frogs when they are stressed.
Nutrition : Yoshiro Nakamatsu who have photographed and analysed his meals for 34 years.
Dynamics of the fluids : Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal for the evaluation of the internal pressure of no-armed persons during the defecation.

IgNobel 2006 :
Ornithology : Ivan R. Schwab and Philip R.A. May for their works on why the green woodpeckers doesn't have headache.
Nutrition : Wasmia Al-Houty and Faten Al-Mussalam for the study of gustatory preferences of the dung-beetle.
Peace : Howard Stapleton for the invention of a machine which emit an unbearable noise that only teenagers can hear.
Acoustics : D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand who explained why the squealing of the nails on a black board is so unpleasant.
Mathematics : Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes for the calcul of the number of photographs that one has to take to be sure that no one in a group will have his eyes closed.
Literature : Daniel Oppenheimer for Consequences of the abusive use of the scholar vernacular language : the problems of the use of long words without it's needed.
Medicine : Francis M. Fesmire for his clinic report about the relief of the hiccup with digital rectal massages.
Physics : Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch for their explanation of the fact that dry spaghettis generally break in more than two pieces.
Chemistry : Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito, José Bon and Carmen Rosselló for the mesurement of the speed of ultrasounds in the Cheddar, in relation with the temperature.
Biology : Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong who demonstrated that the female anophele mosquito, who transports the malaria, is as well attracted by the smell of the Limburger as the smell of human feet.

IgNobel 2007 :
Medicine : Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer for the study of secondary effects of the ingestion of sabres.
Physics : L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for the study of the ripples of plastics.
Biology : Johanna van Bronswijk for the listing of acarids, insects, spiders, scorpios, crustaceans, seaweeds, bacterias, ferns and mushrooms that we can find in a bed.
Chemistry : Mayu Yamamoto for the extraction of vanilline using ciw dung.
Linguistique : Juan Manuel Toro, Joseph B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles who shown that rats don't make the difference between japanese and dutch when one plays back a speach.
Litterature : Glenda Browne for the study of the word « The » and of the difficulties that it implies for the alphabetic range.
Peace : The Air Force Wright Laboratory for the works on the « gay bomb », a chemical weappon that should make soldiers sexually irresistible to their co-fighters.
Nutrition : Brian Wansick for his study of human appetite, using an automatically filled bowl.
Economics : Kuo Cheng Hsieh for the patent of a net that can capture robbers.
Aviation : Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek for the discovery that viagra helps guinea-pigs to get better after a jet lag.

IgNobel 2008 :
Nutrition : Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence for their study about sonority of food.
Peace : the ethic comity about non human biotechnology of Switzerland for the establishment that plants have dignity.
Archeology : Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino for the mesure of nocive effects of tatou on the content of archeological digs.
Biology : Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert and Michel Franc for the discovery that dog's fleas can jump higher than cat's fleas.
Médicine : Dan Ariely who demonstrated that a placebo is more efficient when it's more expensive.
Cognitive sciences : Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro and Ágotá Tóth for the discovery that mycetozoaires could find their way in a labyrinth.
Economics : Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan for the discovery that the ovulation cycle of a stripper can change her tips.
Physics : Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for the mathematical proof that hairs, ropes and a lot of things always make knotts.
Chemistry : Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill and Deborah J. Anderson for the proof that Coke is an efficient spermicide, and Chuang-Ye Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, et B.N. Chiang for the proof that Coke is not an efficient spermicide.
Litterature : David Sims for his nice study « You Bastard : A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations ».

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