Research into nose blowing, candy stealing and splash-free urinals honored at 2026 Ig Nobel awards

Eric Workman/Improbable Research

Think of scientific research and you may picture white lab coats, microscopes or arrays of high-end equipment — but the reality is sometimes very different.

Around the world, scientists are working in less stereotypical environments on unusual research projects, such as gently stepping on different parts of a venomous snake, to work out what exactly will make the animal bite a human.

That is just one of 10 pieces of research honored Thursday at the Ig Nobel awards, which exist to shine a spotlight on the kind of scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to a statement from the organizers.

The ceremony for the 36th edition of the annual awards took place in Zurich, Switzerland, on Thursday, with “fungi” the theme of this year’s event.

Designed as a spoof of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

As well as the now-traditional throwing of paper airplanes, attendees were also treated to a performance of a new operatic song about fungi, performed by Nobel laureates dressed as mushrooms.

Other award-winning projects include research that found “evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior,” which won the economics prize, and another that discovered that cockroach milk contains three times as much energy as that of cow’s milk, which took home the chemistry prize.

Then there was the winner of the medicine category, a study called “How to Blow the Nose — An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing.”

Meanwhile, a study about the evolutionary history of kissing won its authors the biomechanics prize. That study’s co-author, Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, England, told CNN: “Science has been under attack for a while now, and fields that are less obviously aligned with commercial industry and technology are increasingly deemed to be less important.”

“Of course, applied research is vital, but it would be a grave loss if we stopped looking at the world around us and asking ‘why?’. Curiosity for its own sake is fundamental to how science moves forward,” Brindle added.

Research into how to design splash-free urinals scored the physics prize, while work that used mosquito proboscises as 3D printing nozzles, a process described as “necroprinting,” won its authors the technology prize.

Changhong Cao, co-author of the necroprinting study and associate professor at the department of mechanical engineering, McGill University, in Canada, said the awards “help legitimize … exploratory thinking.”

“Nobody sets out planning to build a 3D printing nozzle from a mosquito. We got there by paying close attention to something that seems irrelevant, and staying open to where it leads,” Cao told CNN.

Kojima et al via PLOS

Cows painted like zebras and pizza-eating lizards: The Ig Nobel Prizes are back

Carly Anne York, an associate professor of biology at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, who was not involved in the awards, told CNN that the Ig Nobels “never fail to highlight research that makes you ‘laugh, and then think.’”

“From dirty underpants for soil science to 3D mosquito models, this year’s award winners took seemingly far-fetched ideas and turned them into legitimate research projects. And yes, these are legitimate scientific endeavors,” said York, who authored “ The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog : And Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science.”

“While this research might sound frivolous at first, approximately half of all economic growth in the US can be traced back to discoveries made from basic research,” she added.

“Who knows — the 3D model of a mosquito mouth could be the inspiration for a new, painless mode of administering medications,” York said.

“What we do know, however, is that gaining knowledge is never a frivolous endeavor, no matter how silly the topic may seem.”

埃里克·沃克曼/不可能研究

提到科学研究，你可能会想到白大褂、显微镜或各种高端设备——但现实有时却截然不同。

世界各地的科学家们正在一些不太寻常的环境中从事不寻常的研究项目，例如轻轻踩踏毒蛇的不同部位，以找出究竟是什么会让这种动物咬人。

这只是周四在搞笑诺贝尔奖颁奖典礼上表彰的 10 项研究之一。根据组织者的声明，搞笑诺贝尔奖旨在表彰那些“先让人发笑，然后引发人们思考”的科学成就。

第 36 届年度颁奖典礼于周四在瑞士苏黎世举行，今年的主题是“真菌”。

搞笑诺贝尔奖是诺贝尔奖的戏仿之作，由《不可能研究年鉴》杂志组织举办。

除了现在已成为传统的扔纸飞机活动外，与会者还欣赏了由装扮成蘑菇的诺贝尔奖获得者表演的关于真菌的新歌剧。

其他获奖项目包括一项研究，该研究发现“有证据表明，上层阶级的人更有可能从孩子的糖果供应中抢夺，并从事其他不道德的行为”，该研究获得了经济学奖；另一项研究发现，蟑螂奶所含的能量是牛奶的三倍，该研究获得了化学奖。

然后是医学类别的获奖者，一项名为“如何擤鼻涕——擤鼻涕的空气动力学研究”的研究。

与此同时，一项关于接吻进化史的研究为作者赢得了生物力学奖。该研究的合著者、英国牛津大学的进化生物学家玛蒂尔达·布林德尔告诉CNN：“科学已经遭受攻击一段时间了，那些与商业产业和技术联系不那么紧密的领域越来越被认为不那么重要。”

“当然，应用研究至关重要，但如果我们停止观察周围的世界并提出‘为什么？’的问题，那将是一个巨大的损失。好奇心本身对于科学的进步至关重要，”布林德尔补充道。

一项关于如何设计防溅小便池的研究获得了物理学奖，而一项利用蚊子口器作为 3D 打印喷嘴的研究（该过程被描述为“死灵打印”）则为作者赢得了技术奖。

加拿大麦吉尔大学机械工程系副教授、该项“死灵打印”研究的合著者曹长虹表示，这些奖项“有助于使探索性思维合法化”。

“没有人一开始就计划用蚊子来制造3D打印喷嘴。我们之所以能做到这一点，是因为我们密切关注了一些看似无关紧要的事情，并保持开放的心态，任由它引领我们走向何方。”曹告诉CNN。

Kojima等人通过PLOS发表

画成斑马的奶牛和吃披萨的蜥蜴：搞笑诺贝尔奖又回来了。

北卡罗来纳州希科里市莱诺-莱恩大学的生物学副教授卡莉·安妮·约克（Carly Anne York）并未参与颁奖，她告诉 CNN，搞笑诺贝尔奖“总能突出那些让你‘先笑后思考’的研究”。

“从用脏内裤做土壤科学实验到制作3D蚊子模型，今​​年的获奖者们将看似异想天开的想法变成了合法的研究项目。没错，这些都是合法的科学探索，”约克说道，他著有《鲑鱼炮和悬浮蛙：以及其他严肃的科学发现》一书。

她补充说：“虽然这项研究乍听起来可能很荒谬，但美国大约一半的经济增长都可以追溯到基础研究的发现。”

“谁知道呢——蚊子嘴部的 3D 模型可能会启发人们开发出一种新的、无痛的给药方式，”约克说。

“然而，我们确实知道，获取知识绝非儿戏，无论话题看起来多么愚蠢。”