35th annual Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate science that makes you laugh

Scientists and guests gathered at Boston University in Massachusetts on Thursday (18 September) for the 35th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which honours bizarre scientific discoveries.

This year’s winners included researchers who studied how narcissists react when told they are intelligent, and nutrition researchers studied the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza. 

Other awards recognised work ranging from showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language to discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce. 

The ceremony mixed scientific presentations with audience members throwing paper planes, and miniature opera-like acts singing songs about digestion - a main theme for the ceremony this year.

This year’s prize was the model of a human stomach, with two sides of the stomach resembling a human face.

The annual prizes, meant to entertain and encourage global research and innovation, are awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel Prizes.

“Every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people laugh and then makes them think,” said master of ceremonies Marc Abrahams.

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