2010 Ig Nobel Winners Announced

Velcroman1 writes "Having trouble breathing? Try riding a roller-coaster. Really. A pair of Dutch researchers who discovered that the symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel awards, the infamous annual tribute to scientific research that seems wacky — but also has real world applications. FoxNews.com has interviews with several award winners, who are all ecstatic to win, despite the fact that they're all gently being poked fun at."

Re:Last prize really Ig Nobel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the old saying goes: Those that can, do; Those that can't are promoted to management" Of course, then there is the old saying that "You only get promoted to the level of your incompetency"

A randomized promotion system would tend to push the real workers, the ones who make things happen, into positions where they can affect change.

Slime Molds

[Nyeerrmm]

I'm glad to see the use of slime molds to study transport networks on there.

I honestly thought it was one of the most interesting bits of research I'd seen all year.

Re:Last prize really Ig Nobel?

[hedwards]

Precisely, the way that many organizations promote people you wind up with incompetent butt kissers and psychopaths being promoted. Whereas if you promote people at random, you get those individuals roughly proportional to their representation at the bottom. The individuals who can't cut it would then tend to drop out leaving you with better managers.

OTOH that's terribly depressing, if a validation of the general observation about management practices.

Re:Woah missread

[arth1]

1: If you haven't heard about the Ig Nobel prize before now, I wonder where you've been. I'm pretty sure that most slashdotters can list more Ig Nobel winning research than Alfred Nobel winning research. On the geek scale, Ig Nobel ranks up there with Darwin awards, knowing Binky's colour and the 20th decimal of pi.

2: Not everyone uses a font where I and l look similar. In fact, programmers, sysadmins and other computer geeks tend to abhor fonts with ambiguity. If you can't tell an Omelet from an 0rneIet, you need to change your font NOW.

Re:Last prize really Ig Nobel?

[mdielmann]

I wonder about anaphylactic shock. Would naturally produced adrenaline work at least as a palliative until proper medical treatment can be provided? I wonder what the judge would say if one was to water-board a person suffering anaphylactic shock though.

My kid carries an epi-pen, which led to this story from one of my friends. One day he was hanging out with a girl who was allergic to bee stings. Of course, she got stung, and he tried to help her out with the epi-pen. Unfortunately, he was holding the pen backwards, with his thumb over the end, and when he pushed it into her thigh, it stabbed his finger. The needle is spring-loaded, and reasonably forceful, so it went right in, hit the bone, and curled into a hook. Now he has to pull this thing out, and it's hard. When he finally drags it out, there's a string of tissue hanging from the little hook the pen made. The girl was so freaked out that she was okay until they got to the hospital.

The two things I took away from this were: natural adrenaline can work is you're sufficiently freaked out; and, never put your thumb over the end of an epi-pen.