Studies on pigeon-guided missiles, swimming capabilities of…

BOSTON (AP) — A study exploring the feasibility of using pigeons to guide missiles and another examining the swimming abilities of dead fish were among the winners Thursday of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.

The 34th annual Ig Nobel Prize Awards ceremony, hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research website, was held less than a month before the Nobel Prizes were announced at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It got people laughing and thinking. The laureates were presented with a transparent box containing historical artifacts related to Murphy’s Law (the theme of the evening) and a nearly worthless $10 trillion Zimbabwean bill. The laureates presented their prizes to the laureates.

“While some politicians were trying to pass off sensible things as crazy, scientists were discovering things that seemed crazy but made a lot of sense,” Marc Abrahams, the magazine’s emcee and editor-in-chief, said in an email interview.

The ceremony began with safety briefings by Kees Moliker, winner of the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology. His prize was awarded for a study that documented the existence of homosexual necrophilia in mallards.

“That’s the duck,” he said, holding up a duck. “That’s the dead duck.”

After that, someone came on stage with a yellow target on his chest and a plastic mask on his face. Soon, they were swarmed by people from the audience who threw paper airplanes at them.

The awards ceremony then began, with several boring introductions interrupted by a girl who came on stage and repeatedly yelled, “Please stop. I’m bored.” The awards ceremony was also interspersed with an international song contest inspired by Murphy’s Law, including one about coleslaw and another about the justice system.

The winners were recognized in 10 categories, including peace and anatomy. Among them, scientists showed that a vine from Chile mimics the shapes of nearby artificial plants, and another study examined whether the hair of people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction as that of people in the southern hemisphere.

Other winners included a group of scientists who showed that fake drugs that cause side effects can be more effective than fake drugs that don’t and another who showed that some mammals can breathe through their anuses – winners who took to the stage wearing fish-inspired hats.

Julie Skinner Vargas accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her late father, B.F. Skinner, who wrote the pigeon missile study. Skinner Vargas also heads the B.F. Skinner Foundation.

“I want to thank you for finally recognizing his most important contribution,” she said. “Thank you for setting the record straight.”

James Liao, a biology professor at the University of Florida, received the physics prize for his study demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

“I found that a live fish moves more than a dead fish, but not much,” Liao said, holding a fake fish. “A dead trout towed behind a stick also beats its tail in time with the current like a live fish surfing eddies, gathering energy from its environment. A dead fish does things like a live fish.”