Ig Nobel Prizes scientific achievement 'cannot or should not be reproduced [View All]

[underpants]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051005/lf_afp/afplifestyleusnobel_051005144823

NEW YORK (AFP) - It is difficult to judge exactly where the scientific world would be without Professor Bernard Vonnegut's seminal 1975 study on "Chicken Plucking as a Measure of Tornado Wind Speed."

Along with Vonnegut, previous winners of the increasingly-prized Igs include authors of landmark reports on the impact of country music on suicide, the use of magnets to levitate frogs, and the effect of beer, garlic and soured cream on the appetite of leeches.

The keynote address on Thursday will be given by the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology laureate Kees Moeliker, who won for documenting the first -- and so far only -- recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.

There is also an Ig Nobel Peace Prize, won last year by Daisuke Inoue, the Japanese inventor of karaoke who was cited for "providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."

Acceptance speeches have a one-minute time limit, strictly enforced by a pre-teenage mistress of ceremonies who, when she feels the recipient has said enough, approaches the lectern and repeatedly shouts "Please stop, I'm bored" until they comply.