Welcome to tonight's seminar. sorry
David couldn't make it here today but

it's good because I want to job where.

It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker
today he got to the grief in Atlanta math

at Harvard University in a time of
nine hundred ninety two ninety four

he was the editor of The Journal of you
repressive in reproducible results.

In ninety ninety one when I was four
he was he's found at this price.

He was it he's a great writer
he's the author of six books and

he's a great speaker his TED talk online
has been watch over a million times so

we've updated you let's
welcome market week on.

Thank you Richard Can everyone hear me OK.

I know it's a foolish question because
if you can't hear me you can't hear

the question.

And I wonder if we could turn the lights
down a little bit I'm going to be showing

you a lot of pictures the reason I'm going
to show you a lot of pictures is way back

when I first became a magazine editor and
started talking about the things

that we were writing about I discovered
that if I just talk about them

people were highly amused and
they would come up afterwards and

compliment me on making up such wonderful
jokes and I would have to explain to them

that I don't tell jokes I was
just telling you facts and

by experiment I discovered that if I show
pictures of these things it makes it

easier for people to at least try to
believe that I'm just telling you facts.

So.

That's our logo that either
explains itself or it doesn't.

I will explain things as we go along and.

We'll take questions
afterwards if you have some.

Is this a tradition of
how you turn the whites.

There you can turn the lights down.

A OK Thank you.

OK.

The first thing I'm going to show you I
will tell you about the ignoble crisis and

I'm going to show you a little
piece of video from about one year

ago if you were living in
the Canadian city of Winnipeg and

you watch the evening news one
year ago you would have seen this.

We.

Are in.

Well looking for a point.

Of all this.

That that was apparently
their first exposure to

the Ig Nobel Prizes I'm going to tell
you about last year's winners but

before that I'm going to look back
even farther into the past and

tell you about two other things that have
won ignoble prices and just to give you

a little bit of context to win an ignoble
prize there's just one criterion it's very

different from any other prize that
we're aware of this is for things

that make people laugh and then think
that's it but it's got to do both of those

things it's got to be at first glance at
first hearing something that's just funny.

And then something that also sticks in
your head so that week later really all

you want to do is find your best friends
and tell them about it that's the quality

that we look for
we give ten of these a year and this one.

Won a prize way back in about
nine hundred ninety four.

This is a paper that was
published in a medical journal.

And as you can see it's called failure
of electric shock treatment for

rattlesnake and venom ation the the brief

version of what this describes it's
a case that two doctors treated

about somebody they
identified only as patient X.

patient X.

they explain is a former Marine
who had a pet rattlesnake and

he was very aware that rattlesnakes
are dangerous and that if you are bitten

by a rattlesnake you better get
medical treatment really fast or

you could die so he studied up and
he went to what he regarded as the best

source of medical information this
was some men's magazines he found.

These men's magazines all gave him
pretty much the same advice and

he took it to heart the advice
was If you see somebody

who is bitten by a rattlesnake you
should immediately pass electric

current through that person's body at
the spot where the snake bit the person

that was the advice he had in mind now
it's not the advice you will get from any

medical journal or any medical
professional that we've ever run into but

that's the advice that he believed
was quite real he went out

with a friend of his hiking one day
they were in Arizona they went out in in

the jeep with a pet rattlesnake and
they started walking and

the snake bit this man on his lip he had

already told his friend what to do
should this happen and so he insisted

that the friend follow instructions so
at the insistence of patient X.

The friend went and got their jeep brought
the jeep up hooked up electrical wires

from the jeeps engine to
the lip of patient X.

and then revved up the Jeep
to three thousand.

PM for five minutes.

That's what he looked like after.

They managed to get in touch with
the hospital he was helicoptered

to Tucson two doctors saved his life and

then they teased out all this
background information and

thought that the world ought to know about
this and so they wrote this report and

again we gave the ignoble prize to
the two doctors and to patient X.

I'll tell you a little bit of background
on this every ignoble prize has many

additional stories connected to it if you
choose to follow the details I'll tell you

just a very few of them the ones who be
here all night this one something that I

learned just a couple of years ago I had
met one of the doctors way back when but

I met the second doctor just a couple
years ago when he came up to

the Ig Nobel Prizes to to the ceremony
to take a bow we invite past winners

come back because the audience always
loves to see past winners and then he and

I talked some and he told me
the story that was not in this and

in fact not many people know
that after they save this guy's

life then the Dr went and sat and
talked with Him God is history

one question was Have you ever been
bitten by a snake before and patient X.

said Yes I was back when I was
in the military in Okinawa I was

bitten by a snake and
a doctor saved my life.

The doctor.

Who was interviewing him said.

In surprise do you remember the name
of the doctor who treated you

is the same doctor.

Dr had saved this guy's life
twice both for snake bites.

When you read things in medical journals
or in science journals keep in mind that

often there are extra parts of the story
that are not included in what's published.

So this is one thing for

the past I wanted to show just to give us
of flavor of what the Ig Nobel Prize can

be about each one is very different
Here's another one this next one is

a paper a psychology paper that won the
Ig Nobel Prize in the year two thousand.

This is written by two psychologists
name Dunning and Kruger

some of you may have heard the phrase
the Dunning Kruger effect it comes from or

because of this paper they publish this in
one nine hundred ninety nine we gave them

the prize the next year yeah as you can
see the paper is called unskilled and

unaware of it how difficulties in
recognizing one's own incompetence

lead to inflated self assessments
Let me read that again.

Unskilled and unaware of how
difficulties in recognizing one's

own incompetence lead to
inflated self assessments.

Tell you a little bit more
about the ignoble general.

Again this is the only criterion it's for
achievements of any kind

that make people laugh than think many
of them do have to do with science and

technology and medicine but

many are have to do with other things we
often give out of Peace Prize we have many

times given out a literature prize we've
given our art prizes all sorts of things

the Peace Prize morn year went
to the man who invented karaoke.

There is a man who invented karaoke he
is Japanese as you may have guessed

he came to the ceremony it was his
first visit to the United States

he was surprised to learn that
karaoke had reached the United States.

And we gave him the peace prize rather
than some other category because

as the citation explained by
inventing karaoke he invented

an entirely new way for
people to learn to tolerate each other.

Who.

We see get this back and press the wrong
button Patricia you know I can

recover this I was talking
about incompetence right.

Very much including my own.

If you win an Ig Nobel Prize and I'll tell
you in a minute about how that happens but

if you win an ignoble prize and you do
win an actual prize it's a different

design every year every year it's
hand-made of extremely cheap materials.

This is the prize from two years
ago we have a big ceremony and

we have a theme for
the ceremony different theme every year

theme does not necessarily connect
with any particular prize but

with some of the other things that
happened the theme that year was time so

you can see how this prize fits in with
that there are a couple unusual things

I'll point out about this it's quite
obviously a clock if you look carefully at

the number of minutes in this
clock it's sixty one minutes and

you can see each of
the hands is a sand clock.

And you might want to think a little
bit about the mechanics and

the history of what's going on with
these two kinds of clocks one did in one

you win if you come to the ceremony
you win an actual prize your team

each each team member also gets
a piece of paper that says

they've won an ignoble prize that piece
of paper signed by several people

who have Nobel Prizes So it's a it's
a nice piece of paper to have and there's

a tradition among many of the winners that
they take that piece of paper home frame

it in a nice glass frame and then hang
it in the bathroom above the toilet.

And.

We have no money so we never were able to

give a cash award unlike other prizes and
in fact if you win a prize and

you want to come to the ceremony you
have to get yourself to the ceremony and

back and a lot of the winners
come from other countries but

most of the winners do but we figured
out a way a few years ago to give cash.

To the winners lots of cash and so
now each winner or winning team gets

ten trillion dollars they get a ten
trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe.

The man who is responsible for creating
those ten trillion dollars bills and

also the Hundred Trillion dollar bills and

also the one dollar bills that
they print at the same time.

Which he explained is necessary because
when you spend this this is his

explanation when you spend large amounts
of money you still have to make change.

That government official also won
an ignoble prize in mathematics for

that and just a little bit about
the process we get something like nine or

ten thousand new nominations
every year for the prize

pretty consistently between ten percent
and twenty percent of the nominations or

people who nominate themselves they
almost never win it does happen

one of them is in Atlanta you may
know him or know of him Franz Deval.

Who let you look it up on your
own what he won for so he and

one of his students and
in most cases when we select somebody or

select a team we get in touch with them
quietly we offer them the prize quietly

give them the opportunity to decline
this great honor if they wish to and

happily most people who are offered
a prize decide to accept.

The ceremony the winners are kept secret
until we announce them on stage so

they travel in secrecy and then the heart
of the ceremony up at Harvard and

it's webcast every year has been since one
thousand nine hundred five is the heart of

it is when we introduce each new winner
and the winner steps out through a curtain

and there's a Nobel Prize winner
waiting to shake their hand and

give them their Ig Nobel Prize and it's
quite a lovely moment it says it's as if

the universe had two opposite ends and
they're getting.

To meet and and
look each other in the eye and

you can see neither one quite
believes that it's happening.

And then in between those ten
presentations of the Newegg Nobel prizes

we do lots of other stuff we jam in all
kinds of things quickly including even

an every year a new little opera about
something in science sung by opera singers

and the Nobel laureates have a walk
in a walk on part at the end

this is a picture from the opera that
year it was about the leap second.

And those are clocks human clocks back and
we made

use of those human clocks elsewhere in the
ceremony they'll tell you about in a bit.

We also that year one of the other things
that we jammed into the ceremony was

a quick little competition it was a tic
tac toe competition with very quick rules

and we had four teams competing against
each other one was a NASA scientist and

that's the woman on the left one was
a brain surgeon that's the man who is

dressed as he normally is at work like
a brain surgeon the third team was a team

of Nobel Prize winners and the fourth
team was a team of roller derby skaters.

And their two I'll give you the pleasure
of this pleasure of looking up who won

the video from this ceremony mostly
others is on the web on our website so

you can watch these things
actually happening.

And there's a tradition at
the ceremony that started early on I'm

pretty sure is the second year of a lot
of people in the audience arrive carrying

big heaps of paper which they
use to make paper airplanes so

it's a rather active airspace and
in the building.

Here's a quick look at the winners of the
prizes last year the Ig Nobel Prize for

reproduction that's the first time we ever
gave a prize in that field reproduction.

Went to the late Dr Ahmed Shah
week from Egypt.

For testing the effects of
wearing polyester cotton or

wool trousers on the sex life of rats.

And for then conducting similar
tests on the human male.

This is one of the many papers that
Dr Shafik published about that

you can get copies of these things
quite likely from your library or

over the net and if you can't find him
anywhere else go to our website your links

to all these things and the next
the next image I'm going to show you is

one of the illustrations
that's part of this study.

The Ig Nobel Prize for

economics was awarded to a team
from New Zealand and the U.K..

They won for assessing the perceived
personalities of rocks.

From a sales and marketing perspective.

They published a paper describing their
research it's called the brand personality

of rock's critical evaluation
of a brand personality scale.

This is some detail.

And perhaps you have your own evaluation
of the personality of each of these rocks.

And here are two of the three
authors at the Ig Nobel ceremony

giving their acceptance speech.

And we have a mechanism in place.

Often we use an eight year old girl for
this this particular year we switched and

we use those human clocks from
the opera that when when the clocks

felt that any of the speakers had talked
long enough the truth typically was after

about one minute the clocks would come
over and begin making clock sounds and

that would really was quite effective
in keeping the speeches brief.

Here are some pictures that we ourselves
put together of rocks that are famous for

having distinct personalities.

Look here I can see there are some
people who aren't quite sure why this.

Picture is here if you are not quite sure
why this picture is here look around you.

Find the youngest person near you ask
that person to explain to you why

this picture is here.

Again looking around I can see there are
some other people who aren't quite sure

why this picture is here.

If you're not quite sure why this picture
is here look around you find the oldest

person near you and ask them to
explain why this picture is here

the Ig Nobel Physics Prize
was awarded to a team

based in Hungary but the members are from
several different countries as you can see

hungry Spain Sweden and Switzerland
they were awarded the prize for

discovering why white haired horses
are the most horse fly proof horses

that's their phrase in their paper or
supply proof and also for

discovering why dragonflies are fatally
attracted to black tombstones.

They published a paper about each of
these discoveries this is the the dragon

fly paper in both cases it has to do with
polarized light what happens when light

bounces off the surfaces the horse coat or
the black gravestone and

then what happens in the eyes of these
insects we're able to recognize certain

polarizations of light that's that's the
physics behind this this is some detail

from the dragon fly paper and
this is the horse paper.

The most horsefly proof horses a D.

polarising way code and
here's some detail from that horse paper.

And here's a horse.

This is Susan office and from Sweden
one of the co-authors at the ceremony

at the moment right after she
was handed her Ig Nobel prize

the Ig Nobel Prize for
Chemistry was awarded to vote.

For solving the problem of excessive
automobile pollution emissions.

By automatically electro mechanically
producing fewer emissions.

Whenever the cars are being tested.

In the past year I've done a lot
of talks in many countries.

And in quite a few of them in Europe and
every country I was in

I talk about this prize before I mention
anything other than the name Vokes

wagon everybody in the place already
knows what I'm talking about and

especially in the countries around Germany
people got extremely excited about this.

You know this is part of the the
Environmental Protection Agency's report

about this grand achievement.

The Ig Nobel Medicine all.

The question was did
Volkswagen show up we tried.

We tried you know it's like trying to get
a bureaucracy to agree to something so

so we we were not able.

To get anybody who could was willing
to publicly make a decision.

So in that kind of case we simply
awarded you know if they're already so

well known for this that this could
not possibly really affect them

now the Ig Nobel Medicine Prize
was awarded to a team from Germany

could see it was a good year for Germany.

They were honored for
discovering that if you have an itch

on the left side of your
body you can relieve that

by looking into a mirror and
scratching on the right side of your body.

And vice versa.

This is the paper in which they describe
their research it's called it's relief

by mirror scratching psychophysical study.

And this is one of
the authors at the ceremony

being urged to finish up
his brief acceptance speech

you may have noticed that there is
Silverman on the left there and

if you notice perhaps you're wondering who
that is and Eve maybe even why he's there

he is named Jim Brett Jim has a Ph D.

from MIT.

And wildly poetic phrase that
he invents lots of stuff and

of the many inventions Jim has
there are two that people generally

consider to be his greatest two
inventions one of them is inventing

this idea of what he's doing now he is a
human spotlight we always have two of them

at the ceremony they will move most of
their clothing paint themselves silver and

hold a flashlight up they
eliminate the proceedings

Jim invented this concept of
the human spotlight and he

also many years ago was one of the people
who invented something called three D.

printing.

Three dimensional printing same guy.

He's not the sole inventor but there are
just you know handful of them who did and

after after that we had our own
demonstration since we happen to

have some Nobel laureates
available on stage we asked and

we had some mirrors we stage
a little demonstration.

Tickling thing.

You can try this yourself of course.

The Ig Nobel Prize for
psychology was awarded

to a team from Belgium
the Netherlands Germany Canada and the US.

For asking a thousand light
years how often they lie.

And for deciding whether to believe those.

They published this paper about it
papers call from junior to senior and

cross sectional lifespan
investigation of deception

this is a detail from the study and
you can see that the.

The horizontal line
tells what how many lies

people admitted to telling during the past
twenty four hours you know from one

lie on the left to more than
twenty on the right and

the vertical scale here is what
percentage of of all people

who answer this thing told that many lies
during the past day and admits to it.

And as you can see every pretty much
everybody admits to lying a little bit and

I would be surprised if there's anybody
here who doesn't lie a little bit you know

typically something like I
really like your square.

And quite a few people say they lie even
two or three times a day but it drops off

after that pretty quickly and pretty
methodically here but then something

strange happens if you look up because
there seems to be a group of people who

behave in a very different way from almost
everybody else this group of people quite.

Obviously admits that they
lie twenty times or more day.

You know very different
from everybody else.

And so that's you know that's one of the
findings you might you might ponder what

this means and whether this applies
to anything that you have encountered

in your life especially recently.

And here's one of the authors accepting it
is it Nobel Prize the ignoble Peace Prize.

Which many consider the most
prestigious of the Nobel Prize.

Was awarded to a team based in Canada.

For their study called on
the reception and detection.

Of pseudo profound bullshit.

Here's a look at their paper which sure
enough is called on the reception and

detection of pseudo profound bullshit

I'll remind you you can get copies
of these papers pretty easily.

And if you want if you go to any good
librarian and ask for it usually they're

pretty pleased that somebody is asking
them for these things that's their paper

this is the team at the ceremony at
the moment they were concluding their

acceptance speech
the Ig Nobel Biology Prize.

Was awarded jointly to two people.

One of them is Charles Foster
Charles Foster got his share of

the Ig Nobel Biology Prize for living in
the wild as at different times a badger

an author a deer a fox and a bird.

He shared the prize with another man
both of them are British by the way.

Named the other man is named
Thomas the weights and

you are now a little familiar with Thomas
Thwaites Thomas Thwaites got his prize for

creating prosthetic extensions of his
limbs that allowed him to move in

the manner of and spend time roaming
hills in the company of goats.

Each of them has written a book and
I've I've read these books they're really

they're they're quite
worth reading these books.

Go to man is the name of
Thomas Wade's his book he.

At a talk that we did together
in London a few months ago some

at Imperial College London somebody
in the audience asked him.

When you spent time this is on
a mountainside in Switzerland

he said when you spent all this time
with the goats living with the goats.

Did you have any personal
relationships anything develop.

And Thomas.

Became a little bit shy for a moment.

And then he said Well probably nothing

like you really want to hear
there was nothing sexual.

But there was one go.

Go to number eighteen.

That's goat number eighteen there.

And should you ever meet Thomas and

feel free to ask him about it
he seems to have fond memories.

And so was the two of them that's Charles
Foster who lived as all those different

animals and he really did he lived
out in a hole in the woods for

weeks at a time eating the things
that something that lived

in a hole in the woods would eat and
communing with the other things there or

living underwater in a stream
his head above history and

various other things and
here's Thomas Thwaites at the ceremony.

We discovered that when somebody
is has been converted into

a goat it's a little difficult to hand
them something have them grasp it.

And here are a few pictures from
his time on the mountainside

I'm assuming you want to see
a few more pictures of me.

You recognize both of these characters.

The Ig Nobel Literature Prize was awarded
to Frederick Schubert from Sweden.

For a three volume autobiographical
work that he wrote.

All about the pleasures of
collecting flies that are dead and

flies that are not yet.

This is the first volume it's
been translated into English.

It too is well worth a read.

And here he is at the Ig Nobel ceremony
delivering his acceptance speech

the Ig Nobel perception prize first
time we've given a prize in that field

the perception Prize was awarded
to two scientists from Japan

for investigating whether things
look different when you bend

over and view them between your legs.

They wrote this paper about
it called perceived size and

perceived distance of targets viewed
from between the legs evidence for

appropriate deceptive theory appropriate
Cept of is a big word from psychology

probably quite a number of people in
this room use this word regularly but

it's pretty likely that there are lots of
people in this room who have never seen

this word before and I wonder if well I'd
like to ask a favor of if there's somebody

in the room who is familiar with this word
and wouldn't mind standing up and just

explaining it in a sentence or two for
everybody else anybody familiar with it.

You know would you mind.

Here's a here's a microphone here.

And are standing up Proprioception is that
it's awareness of your body in space.

Including their relative
positions of your joints

Yeah it's like something Times called in
additional sense yes that's what it is and

we ask a further favor would
you mind coming up here and.

And.

Hang on to the microphone and
it would you might yet

stand it would you mind bending over just
looking for you look through your legs and

and and maybe you can help balance here.

Well yeah if you could do that and
then when you're doing that explain again.

In case anyone had difficulty
understanding the first time yes

sure your cat.

Does you could you help.

I just explain again please

I don't know now I have an entirely
different take on things I.

Proprioception is the awareness of

the relative positions of different
parts of your body in space.

It's sometimes referred
to as a sixth sense.

Is that good enough and that's good
enough but thank you thank you.

Thank you.

Here is the lead author of that study
finishing up his acceptance speech and

then he felt that this is a difficult
concept for people who've

never encountered it so he too decided
to give a demonstration to the audience.

And we were still worried that this was
such a new thing to most people that

we thought it wouldn't hurt to
give another demonstration and so

we asked the four Nobel Prize winners.

On stage to help.

Which they very kindly did.

During the past year I have been told and
I have seen

news reports that and I've been
told by many reporters from Japan

that this particular prize was especially
popular in Japan the Ig Nobel had been

very popular in Japan I'd been told for
many many years but this this prize and

this professor apparently got even more
than the usual amount of attention and

people described him to me as having
become something of a hero to a lot of

people you know in the sense that people
want a scientist to be something of a you

know intellectual hero for them and
that around Japan many places

that are places tourists go to look
at beautiful scenery have started to.

Take notice of this and so
there are things like this.

And if anyone here is traveling to
Japan in the next year or so and

you run across this I I would be
appreciative if you drop me a note and

tell me if you try this yourself and
what you learned.

At the end of each ignoble ceremony
every year we ask all the winners and

all the other people who are involved to
gather at the center of the stage for

a pointless photo opportunity
that's what you see here so

that was the end of the ceremony and this
year's ceremony happened just three weeks

ago you can look up the winners on
our website you can watch them and

we are now starting to gather all of the
things we need to gather to prepare for

next year's ceremony and
if you know of somebody

who you think deserves an ignoble
prize could be yourself.

Could be your best friend could be your
colleague could be your enemy could be

anybody but if you ever run across
somebody who you think deserves a prize

just drop us a note that's how we've
learned about the vast majority of

people who wanted Nobel prizes that one
person somewhere happened to notice it and

was kind enough to send in a nomination so

that would be really very
nice of you to do that.

This is our magazine The Annals
of Improbable Research comes out

six times a year and one issue the issue
at the end of the year is always a special

issue about the ignoble
winners from that year and

you can see go man was
the almost mandatory choice for

the picture we've put on the cover I
hope you'll subscribe to the magazine

the magazine is mostly little quotations
and citations from mostly science

reports from around the world and some of
them very old some of them very new about

all kinds of things that have this quality
of making people laugh and then think so

here especially if you run across
something and a lot of people in this room

are scientists or on the way to becoming
scientists you run across all sorts of.

Off if you run across
something with this quality

please do what you usually do tell your
two or three friends about that and

then drop us a know so that maybe we
can tell the rest of the world so

that's pretty much what I've come to
tell you be very happy to answer any

questions if you have some and
thank you very much thank you.

Thank you.

If there were more than three questions
probably many of you know but

perhaps quite a few of you
don't know that Patricia Young

is an ignoble Prize winner she and
David who her advisor.

Thank you Patricia or
would you mind explaining

in a couple of sentences what you did
that won your prize No I was winning.

Business pricing fifteen study how long it
takes for animal to uni Big Oil most P.

and its entire twenty one seconds
plus minus thirty seconds and

this is almost any mammal
all mammals from elephant to

Elson to cats to tigers to human
beings twenty one seconds plus or

minus thirteen seconds OK this too you
can do a little research on your own

you have a question raise your arm and
and Patricia will bring you a microphone.

I mean I know at least one big Know
when to get to know how many have got

Nobel prizes by now how many ignoble Prize
winners have got Nobel Prize winners.

One and sort of another one.

The one is Andre Geim who won an ignoble
prize in the year two thousand he and

another physicist use
magnets to levitate a frog.

You may have seen the videos of
this you can find this on Youtube

very easily they did this
because they rediscover.

Heard something about magnetism that
most physicists were not aware of now or

had forgotten and almost nobody else would
believe and this was a pretty dramatic

demonstration of it and it's not just
rocks it's all sorts of stuff ten years

later Andre Geim was awarded a Nobel Prize
in Physics for something else but

the way he found that something else
sounds equally goofy maybe more so

quite likely when you were a kid
you played with pencil and

paper and scotch tape you scribble
with a pencil on the paper and

you use some scotch tape to pick up
some of the gray stuff on there and

then maybe you flex it and
you watch the little grey flakes come up.

There is a substance that called graphene

familiar to many of you which is a form of
carbon it's the two dimensional form so

it's it's a sheet one atom thick so
you know thin it's possible thing

on earth and chemists had known for
a long time that this thing exists and

they've known where to find it you can
find it in any pencil that graphite

that gray stuff is millions of layers
of these sheets stick together but

they stick together so tightly nobody had
ever managed to get them apart which was

extremely frustrating because there's all
kinds of interesting stuff possibly going

on there but nobody could test it
in any way until Andre Geim and

one of his students one night were
playing with a pencil and scotch tape and

a piece of paper and they collected
some of the stuff that flaked off and

they put it under a microscope and they
discovered they had the first known big

enough samples to examine to examine and
play with of graphene anywhere and

as a result of that many
of you know quite well and

probably some of you are working on around

the world there are entire new
branches of science and there are tire

new industries built up around the things
they've discovered that this graphene.

Can do so you never know you know when
you're when you're trying things out

the this sort of part there's another
winner who won an ignoble prize and

who already technically had a share of a
Nobel Prize technically is because he had

worked for one of the large international
agencies that one Nobel Peace Prize so

all of the hundreds of employees
technically have a Nobel Prize but

you know that's different he
won his ignoble prize he and

a colleague there Dutch
they study insects and

in particular they're trying to find ways
to prevent malaria from being spread so

much so they discovered that the malaria

mosquitoes are strongly very
strongly attracted to two very

specific odors they're attracted
to the odor of Limburger cheese.

And the odor of human feet.

And they point out that there is something
of a connection between those two things

Limburger cheese comes from Limburg It's
a region that straddles the border between

Belgium and the Netherlands and that way
back when originally Limburger cheese was

made by monks with bare feet
stamping around in the milk.

The bacteria that you can
find in Limburger cheese and

the bacteria that are on many
human feet these scientists

say is almost identical
Isn't that interesting.

Anybody else have a question.

Are you going to listen to find out for

ourselves what it was about this
magnetism which we don't forgotten.

You said that this guy
with the floating frogs

all give you the pleasure of looking at.

Both of them have written about it
under a Gaiman my Michael Berry is

is the other and both of them have
written about it quite a bit and and

are all very very happy to talk and
write more about it but

it's more of a pleasure I think
if you look it up yourself.

What's your favorite big
Nobel Prize that you've given

people ask me that all the time and
it's always a different one but

I have I have one that I usually mention
it because it's always one of my favorites

it's the Biology Prize we gave
out in the year two thousand and

three it went to the scientists from
the Netherlands who studies birds

he's an ornithologist He's also one of the
people who runs the Natural History Museum

in the city of Rotterdam His name is
case Muhlach or he noticed something

really unusual one day and his he
told his colleagues about it and they

all told him you have to write this up and
publish it in the scientific journal and

he he resisted and for six years and
finally he gave into nagging and

he published it in a little biology
journal in the Netherlands somebody who

reads it sent us a copy we gave it
the prize that report by case military

is the first scientific report
of homosexual necrophilia.

In the mallard duck.

It's also one of the best written
scientific reports you ever.

Case has done TED talk a lot of Nobel
winners have done TED Talks and

their thing and
cases is one of the most popular go.

If you're curious in just Google
the four words TED talk dead duck.

And every year.

On June fifth at the Museum of cases
now the director of the museum they but

for many years now every year on June
fifth they have a big celebration to

commemorate the anniversary
of the incident.

Ok saw and

the public comes in they have scientists
give talks they reenact what happened.

And then anybody who wants to walks a
short distance into the middle of downtown

Rotterdam and they all enjoy together
a lovely six course duck dinner.

OK next question.

All of the examples of Sept one and

that you showed us were published in
peer review journal three right yeah but

you're going to treat it the chemistry one
was based on a press release How did you

get how did a happen because it's
irrelevant to many things really

are irrelevant to us in choosing these
prizes you first of all it doesn't have to

be about science the only thing that
matters is that it's something that

that has that quality it makes people
anywhere laugh and then think.

It does not matter to us
whether it's good or bad.

And the notion of good and bad changes
a lot you look back over the history of

science almost everything that's
considered good that's taught

in every science class you've
ever taken if you go back and

look at the earliest history
people made fun of it.

So add some time to something and what's
good may later come to be seen as bad or

vice versa you don't know whether
something is important or trivial also

that doesn't matter for this so
whether it was documented first in

a press release we check more than just
the press release but it doesn't matter

whether they are professional scientist or
not we've given a couple prizes to kids.

Don't think one of the prizes gave three
weeks ago it was to somebody who did.

The work while he was a high school
student He's now a sophomore at

University of Virginia he was a high
school student in South Korea

he all tell you what he did he built on.

Some research that wanted Nobel Prize.

Years ago done by two physicists
in California who examine

the physics of why it is when
you hold a cup of coffee and

walk that it's almost impossible
to do that without spilling and

it is the physics of it
make it nearly impossible.

This high school kid in Korea read this
report thought about it and wondered.

What happens if you hold a cup
of coffee and walk backwards.

And so that's what his report is about and

he discovered a couple things I'll tell
you just one one of them is he discovered

that it's far less likely
to spill because of that

the reason is when you walk forward as you
probably have experienced too many times.

Everybody who walks at all
comfortably gets into a rhythm and so

you're you know the harmonics mean
you're sloshing this more and

more it's going to spill
that's why it spills

when you walk backwards very few people
are adept at walking backwards and

so you don't get into much of a rhythm
unless you're a professional dancer you

may have training so you do but
otherwise almost nobody does

of course there are other problems if you
walk backwards that might cause a spill.

That maybe one or
two more questions yeah so.

Going back to your slides
about the personality of rocks

I was wondering what do you
have against Twain Johnson.

There is so much to say about each of
these prizes that the agonizing thing is

is paring down and only saying a little so

it's you're right it's
a terrible deficiency.

And and in future talks I
really should include him.

Yeah I apologize to anyone who's
offended because when Johnson.

OK And final question.

Is it quite easy to get Nobel Prize
winners to agree to participate in this

I would think that some of them might be
good sports and there were other ways if

we were to get the same people going
back if you're used to friends

there are some who come back most years
when they're not traveling and then there

are some who come once or twice or
every few years all we can do is ask them.

That's that's our only power
is to invite people and

some people think it's a fun thing to
do and some people really think it's

it's not what they do and so
they don't come that's about it.

But you know it's fun when they do they
get to they've got to be kind of off duty

you know and
somebody gets prizes on that level for

the rest of their life they're
treated wonderfully but

sometimes it's nice to not be
officially a God every single moment

to be able to be out in public and
you just have people appreciate you for

being a person who is
another person in the room so

I think that maybe a little part of it
too so anyway thank you very much for

coming tonight thank you to an event and
for arranging this I want to thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My career and if you want more information
any of this stuff just go to our website

improbable dot com Thank you.