Boldly Going Perhaps Where No One Should
Ig Nobel Lectures Enlighten Listeners about Unusual Scientific Research
Attendees of the Ig Nobel Medical Lectures in the Snyder Auditorium on Friday, October 6 glimpsed a public health problem now present in Scotland and looming large for the US--some unlucky souls have cut themselves on the shards of antiquated porcelain toilets in Glasgow after sitting upon the shatter-prone seats.
"We may be seeing this epidemic slightly ahead of you in the US," reported Jonathan Wyatt, who co-authored a paper on the trend, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow," in the Scottish Medical Journal in 1993.
For their paper, Wyatt and two co-authors were given the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health in ceremonies in Cambridge on October 5. The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded annually by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research and several co-sponsors. The awards honor "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced," according to the magazine, and offer a good-natured look at some unusual bona fide research projects. Prizes in nine other scientific disciplines were also presented.
Four of the 10 winners came to HSPH the day after the awards ceremony to present lectures about their studies to an enthusiastic crowd. The "collapsing toilets" paper was the first lecture and started appropriately with a slide picture of the exposed rear end of one of the victims.
"You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to get a picture," said Wyatt, who later dispelled a suggestion by an audience member that the trend was a nefarious campaign designed by English agents against the Scots. After all, pointed out the audience member, the inventor of the first modern, flushing toilet was an Englishman, Thomas Crapper.
The
winner of the prize in biology presented his paper, "On the Comparative
Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica" published
in The American Midland Naturalist in 1971. When he was still a
student, Richard Wassersug, now of Dalhousie University in Canada, spent
more than two days collecting and tasting tadpoles of a variety of tropical
frogs and toads. His research aim was to determine if their palatability
served as a defense mechanism against predators.
"If you can't run away from your predators," observed Wassersug, "you better be nasty tasting."
Student colleagues joined his taste-testing efforts, he said, after "a modest offer of beer." A word to the wise, he warned: toads taste terrible.
Also delivering a lecture was Pek van Andel of Groningen, the Netherlands. He and three colleagues took MRI images of eight human volunteer couples as they copulated. The scientists published the results in their paper, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal," in a 1999 issue of the British Medical Journal.
Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands was the only lecturer outside of a medically related field to present research at the lectures. He and a colleague from Bristol University printed their findings "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons" in a 1997 issue of the European Journal of Physics. They managed to levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler with magnets.
But with a cross-disciplinary insight that makes scientific lectures worthwhile, Geim concluded his presentation by suggesting that magnets may be used to levitate toilet seats that may otherwise collapse like those in Scotland.
For a list of all of the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize prize winners, go to www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html.
