Talk:List of Ig Nobel Prize winners

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[edit] Chronological order - most recent should be first

I think the chronological order needs to be reversed. I.e., instead of the most recent awards being listed at the bottom, they should be listed at the top. The most recent awards are, afterall, the most interesting to readers. I'll do this polarity reversal in a couple of days if nobody objects in the meantime. --84.151.208.142 16:49, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. Most of the other awards are in order from oldest to newest. (Otherwise, I would agree with you.)Tiger MarcROAR! 16:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The jokes need to go

Someone needs to remove the hideous jokes in the list. Not because they aren't funny (which they really aren't) but because wikipedia is not a comedy. If the jokes are quotes from the actual event, then the jokes need to appear in quotation marks. --Badharlick 14:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

if you want to add the quote marks go ahead. The jokes are from the awards citations, not wikipedia authors. Akb4 06:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. They're subtle and not really jokes anyway -- but funny wording. If you wanted to remove all the humor, you would have to change the Ig Nobel categories too because they're part of what makes these awards funny. And that would be out of bounds of WP. Tiger MarcROAR! 16:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


How do I get rid of the table of contents? --DoubleRing 21:19, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC) Oh, I found it, it's gone now --DoubleRing 21:28, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I redid the entire list. Because of that, I removed some of the links that were not linked to any other Wiki pages. If you find a page on a person and want to restore the link, be my guest. I originally kept everything in but it was hideous with all of the red. --Woohookitty 20:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Are the prizes listed in any particular order on this page? If not, would alphabetical order be a good idea? Andjam 04:10, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2002 Economics

What does it mean? Where exactly did they apply imaginary numbers? Why these companies? Samnikal 06:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The imaginary numbers are not the imaginary numbers of Mathematics, but more closely akin to fiction - the companies named illegitimately placed "profits" on their books, typically through arcane accounting methods that involved shuffling of assets through leases and buybacks with cooperative partners (Enron), or booking as sales transactions that were not yet realised, or even realizable (WorldCom) or by hiding expenses, and other methods (many years ago a disk drive manufacturer was caught placing bricks in boxes and showing the finished inventory, supposedly a disk drive, as an asset). - Leonard G. 04:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be something if these accountants had used the imaginary numbers of Mathematics! You're right that this is ambiguous so I will add an explanation. Tiger MarcROAR! 16:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2005 Chemistry

How strange, rather than chemistry, this (swimming in syrup) should have been assigned by the awarders to Fluid Dynamics (Am I taking this too seriosly?) - Leonard G. 00:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes :-P Michaelritchie200 14:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


I removed the erroneous explanation that " the increase in drag in a syrup pool is canceled out by the increase in "push" a swimmer gets on each stroke" . Most people think more drag means more viscous drag because syrup has a nigher viscosity, but actual viscous drag conrtributes little to the total drag in this case, so the real explanation is likely that viscous drag is a small fraction of total drag. Drag is mostly wave drag and a drag from "inertial" effects under the surface that does not depend on viscosity. Zaleski 12:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1993 Physics

Corentin Louis Kervran died in 1983. He never mentioned cold fusion. The chicken, "Cagliostro", is still laying. Dating from 1799 (Vauquelin) it is now 207 years old. Sunny side up its eggs look a palatable gold. (Lunarian 19:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC))

[edit] edeting

I think it would be a good idea to put the prizes in alphabethical order.

Agreed. This is the second mention of putting them in alpha order so I am going to be bold and do just that! Tiger MarcROAR! 15:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1992 Archaeology

I've always enjoyed reading about the Ig Nobels. Seeing them in Wikipedia got me to thinking about verifiable sources, and the 1992 story of the French scouts mistaking ancient cave paintings for graffiti made me wonder ... urban legend? I didn't find it at snopes.com, but searching for pages in French turned up only pages quoting the Ig Nobel award. Maybe 1992 is a bit early for news services to be all posted so it may have been in the media and just not posted on the web back then. But if this were just a claim in a Wiki page, I'd have trouble justifying it. Birdbrainscan 03:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)