The Awards Are In!!

One of the winners...

Medicine – Dr. Francis Fesmire said he wasn’t sure whether he was honored or embarrassed when he learned he’d won an Ig Nobel for his paper called — ahem — “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.”
“I’m a serious guy, and something I wrote in 1987 is coming back to haunt me,” said Fesmire, an emergency physician and director of the emergency heart center at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Um…bravo, Dr. Fesmire! Another…

Biology – Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong, for showing that female malaria mosquitoes are attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

and a third…

Ornithology – Dr. Ivan Schwab accepted his Ig Nobel for his work explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. Schwab, an opthamologist, said his writings are based on the research of deceased UCLA professor Phillip R.A. May, who received an Ig Nobel posthumously.
“I had heard about the Igs and this sounded like too much fun to pass up,” said Schwab, who planned on dressing up as a woodpecker for the ceremony. “I’m very proud to be part of it.”

By george, I would be too. (The Ig Nobel website is getting hammered right now, but I’m sure there’s great stories when we can get in.) Read the whole list on MSNBC and weep.

One Response to “The Awards Are In!!”

1. Nightfly says:

   October 6, 2006 at 12:51 pm

   So, the new excuse is, “But she had intractable hiccups!”