Poems About Some Ig Nobel Prize Winners Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research, its stated aim being to 'honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.' The Ig Nobels were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements for being the location of Hell. The winners are taken from the web.

Poems on Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Chemistry - Jacques Benveniste, prolific proselytizer and dedicated correspondent of Nature, for his persistent 'discovery' that water, H2O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all traces of those events have vanished (see water memory, his proposed explanation for homeopathy) .

Water
It's been claimed that a talent of water
Is like humans, its power to remember
When you turn on the tap
Don't treat it like crap
By flushing it into the gutter

Biology - Presented jointly to Paul Williams Jr. of the Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth W. Newel of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, bold biological detectives, for their pioneering study, 'Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs'

Thrill seeking Pigs
Salmonella was found in the poo
Of pigs, who had recently gone to the loo
When Joy Riding in cars
After boozing in bars
And eating an ‘off' barbecue

Literature - Presented to David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison, Wisconsin, for their research report, 'Rectal Foreign Bodies:

Rectal Foreign Bodies
Rectal foreign bodies come
In many shapes & sizes
Life bulbs, a spring, a sharpener
Two flashlights- such surprises

A snuff box and an oil can
Eleven types of fruit
Veggies and a jeweller's saw
And stranger things to boot

Tin cup, a frozen pig's tail
Beer glass, a suitcase key
Spectacles, a magazine
No eyes up there to see!


Nutrition - Presented to John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for luak coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak, a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia.

Coffee
Would you like your coffee excreted?
Your caffeine shot out of a bum?
If your latte was pooed, would you heat it
And welcome it into your tum?

Biology - Presented jointly to Anders Bærheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway, for their report, 'Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches."

Leeches
Some leeches dine on human blood
And some on soured cream
And some take beer or garlic
But yuck, they're still obscene!

Public Health - Presented to Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway, for their cautionary medical report 'Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll.'

The Inflatable Doll
Never make love to a blown up doll
It's plasticky and dead
It is a haven for bad germs
So buy a kite instead

Economics - Presented to Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan, and Aki Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, for diverting millions of man-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets.


The Pretend Pets
They've got no fleas. They never bite
Pretend pets don't need feeding
And if you let them play outside
You know they won't be breeding

Peace - Presented to Harold Hillman of the University of Surrey, England, for his report 'The Possible Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods.'

Death by Various Means
Beheading by axe is a hit or a miss
Hanging is suffocation
Shooting is messy, poisoning's cold
To smother's asphyxiation

Drowning's not for the faint of heart,
Bludgeoning is quite nasty
Drawing & quartering, you're torn apart
Like a nice warm Gregg's meat pasty

Biology - Presented to Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac.

Clams
A clam on prozak smiles & smiles
Just like the Cheshire Cat
But when it's down, it's very down
And flat's a trodden mat

Physics - Presented to Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Michael Berry of Bristol University, England, for using magnets to levitate a frog.[63] Geim later shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on graphene, the first time anyone has been awarded both the Ig Nobel and (real) Nobel Prizes

The Levitating Frog
Did you hear of the frog who could levitate?
Did floating go to its head?
As it rose from the pool
In a dribble of drool
Did it sleep on a cloudy bed?

Interdisciplinary Research - Presented to Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney, Australia, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button fluff - who gets it, when, what colour, and how much
Belly Fluff
Belly fluff, belly fluff
What's the colour of that stuff?
How much belly fluff's enough?
Like an Elizabethan ruff?

Mathematics - Presented to K. P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University, India, for their analytical report 'Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants'.


How to Measure an Elephant
How do you measure an elephant?
With a ruler, compass or tape?
Do you run it down with a roller
So it's just a flattened shape?


Biology - Presented to Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University, Canada, Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Wahlberg of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and Håkan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.


Herrings
Herrings converse by farting
Their bubbles are laughs or sighing
So when you bone & fry it
If it parps perhaps its crying

Ornithology: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California, Davis, and Philip R.A. May of the University of California, Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.

The Woodpecker
The woodpecker's a head banger
It's got a tiny brain
A pea sized brain, so hammering
Does not result in pain

Peace: Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant - a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but probably not to their teachers
The Anti-teenage Noise
The anti-teenage noise is used
To frighten gangs who all
Hang round to frighten pensioners
From shopping in the mall

It seems to irritate their ears
With unpleasure ignited
Does it infringe their human rights?
Perhaps, but others like it.

Physics: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E Lieberman of Harvard University, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas at Austin, all in the US, for analytically determining why pregnant women do not tip over.[149]

Tipping Point
Why don't pregnant mum's tip over?
With all that weight in front?
Is it caused by leaning backwards
Or just a mummy stunt?

Veterinary medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, UK, for showing that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

Milky Moos
Don't call your Friesian number three
Or twenty eight or nine
Give her a name like Betty
Henrietta, Adeline

Then when you tweak her udders
The milk will flow like wine
Treat your bovines nicely
Kindness is no crime


Physiology: Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber for their study 'No evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria'.

Tortoise Yawning
When a red footed tortoise is yawning
It isn't contagious. All's well
Perhaps all its neighbours are sleeping
With her heads and tails inside their shell

Medicine: Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, for assessing the effect of listening to opera on mice which have had heart transplant operations.

Operatic Mice
Has your mouse had a heart operation?
A bypass, a transplant, a stent?
To help it recover, play Verdi
It may have a classical bent

Mozart, Puccini, Rossini
Wagner, Beethoven & Strauss
Britten, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Bellini
Sooth the heart of your classical mouse!