Stinky feet, annoying noise top IgNobel prize list

[tocqueville]

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Thu Oct 5, 8:57 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research into stinky feet, a study on the sound of fingernails on a blackboard and a device that repels teen-agers with an annoying high-pitched hum on Thursday won IgNobel prizes -- the humorous counterpart to this week's Nobel prizes.

Other winning research included a U.S. and Israeli team's discovery that hiccups could be cured with a finger up the rectum and a study into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.

"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," which sponsors the awards with the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

All the research is real and has been published in often-prestigious scientific and medical journals. However, unlike the Nobel prizes awarded this week by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, IgNobel winners receive no money, little recognition and have virtually no hope of transforming science or medicine.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061006/sc_nm/science_ignobels_dc_2

dammit, I always knew about the finger trick, could have won the prize

[sakabatou]

1. My fave has to be the homosexual necropheliac duck

Just because the researcher's description of how he found out is hilarious.

[Vidar]

2. Damn you, now I have to go look at the link.

[greyl]

3. I should start my research on the sound of cheesy paper and chewing

cereal on commercials.