The Nobel prize spoof honors achievements "that first make people laugh and then make them think," according to a press release yesterday.
The Ig Nobels invite real Nobel laureates to confer honors on serious scientists for work that is generally only unintentionally funny.
There is also a peace prize, which this year was jointly awarded to the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus police "for arresting a one-armed man for applauding."
A team from the Britain, Netherlands and Canada were awarded the probability prize for determining that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely it is it will soon stand up.
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They also discovered that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon it will lie down again.
The physics prize went to researchers who discovered that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond -- if those people and that pond were on the moon.
The study by researchers who confirmed drunk people really do think they are more attractive won the Psychology Prize.
A team from Japan and Germany tackled the age-old question of why onions make us cry and discovered merely that the biochemical process is "even more complicated than scientists previously realised."
The archaeology prize went to a US-Canada team who parboiled a dead shrew, swallowed it without chewing, and then carefully examined their excretions to see which bones dissolve inside the human digestive system.