Episode 8: A Dead Duck, Money, a Prize and Laughter — Ig Nobel Prizes
Episode summary written by Francesca Jacklin
In this episode of the Monday Science podcast, Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham shares with us some snippets from her favourite TED Talk by Kees Moeliker. She enlightens us with information about a ridiculous annual award ceremony, the Ig Nobel Prizes, and delights us with some information about some recent winners.
How did the Nobel Prizes start?
So you’ve probably heard of a Nobel Prize. Awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the Nobel Prize is presented to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, economics, peace, and physiology or medicine.
The Nobel Prizes were established after the death of Swedish Industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel in 1896. Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. He was a prolific inventor of a great many things, including dynamite, which at that time, was mainly used for civilian applications.
In 1888, Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, died while visiting Cannes, and a French newspaper mistakenly published Alfred’s obituary instead of Ludvig’s. The obituary condemned Alfred for his invention of military explosives.
The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”) and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered. The mishap is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death.
He signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. The amount he left in his will when converted to current day is around £1,687,837 (GBP). In 2012, the capital was worth around £380 million.
Richard Roberts published an interesting article on Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize, quoted below:
1. Never Start Your Career by Aiming for a Nobel Prize
2. Hope That Your Experiments Fail Occasionally
3. Collaborate with Other Scientists, but Never with More Than Two Other People
4. To Increase Your Odds of Winning, Be Sure to Pick Your Family Carefully
5. Work in the Laboratory of a Previous Nobel Prize Winner
6. Even Better Than Rule 5, Try to Work in the Laboratory of a Future Nobel Prize Winner
7. Always Design and Execute Your Best Experiments at a Time When Your Luck Is Running High
8. Never Plan Your Life around Winning a Nobel Prize
9. Always Be Nice to Swedish Scientists
10. Study Biology
Nobel Prize controversies
Adolf Hitler was nominated for a peace prize in 1939. A Swedish legislator had nominated him as a joke, but no one found it amusing. Instead, it created an uproar, and the nomination was quickly withdrawn. Hitler actually didn’t like the Nobel prizes. After a vocal critic of Hitler, was given the 1935 peace prize, Hitler barred all Germans from accepting a Nobel Prize and created the German National Prize for Art and Science as an alternative. In 1939, three scientists were forced to decline their Nobel awards but later received their diplomas and medals.`
While most consider the Nobel Prize a major honour, two winners have voluntarily declined the award. Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and author, did not accept the 1964 literature prize. He apparently refused all official awards. In 1974 he was joined by Le Duc Tho, a Vietnamese politician who, with Henry Kissinger, Former United States Secretary of State, shared the peace prize for their work to end the Vietnam War. Le Duc Tho however, refused to accept it, saying that “peace has not yet been established.”
Ig Nobel Prizes — started out to honour achievements that make people LAUGH first and then THINK
The Ig Nobel Prizes were established in 1991, and are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.
Every September, in a gala ceremony at Harvard University’s. The Ig Nobel Prizes are physically handed out by genuine Nobel Laureates. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, the ceremony will take place entirely online, on Thursday, September 17, 2020.
The ceremonies generally follow the format as follows:
- The new Ig Nobel Prize winners are introduced to the public by a formal Nobel laureate.
- A mini-opera: this year it is called “Dream, Little Cockroach
- Several of the world’s great thinkers will share briefly, what they are thinking about in an event called 24/7 lectures. First, they provide a complete, technical description in 24 seconds, Then, a clear summary that anyone can understand in 7 words
- Paper air-planes will fly.
The 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize was awarded to Kees Moeliker, of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. Moeliker gave a TED Talk on the subject in 2013 — it’s a brilliant watch!
A few winners in 2019 included:
- Medicine: Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.
- Psychology: Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.
- Economics: Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria.
Remember that these are real publications and research findings! The researchers were not conducting the work thinking it was amusing.
So which country’s notes are best at transmitting bacteria?
Globally, money is one of the items most frequently passed from hand to hand. During its passing, money can get contaminated and is likely to play a role in the transmission of microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses to other people.
The aim of the study was to investigate the survival status of bacteria on Euro, US Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Croatian Luna, Romanian Leu (RON), Moroccan Dirham, and Indian Rupee and the transmission of bacteria to people who come in contact with the banknotes.
The bacteria they investigated (MRSA, VRE and ESBL-producing E. coli) are all multi-drug resistant bacteria:
- MRSA “super bug” — meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- VRE — vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus are bacterial strains of the genus Enterococcus that are resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin
- Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) Producing Escherichia coli (E.coli) — are enzymes produced by bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Klebsiella.mainly bacteria that are found normally in the human bowel,
The study found that Romanian Leu yielded all 3 multi-drug resistant pathogens; MRSA, VRE and ESBL-producing E. coli; the Canadian and (US) American Dollar only yielded MRSA; the Euro only ESBL-producing E. coli; the Indian Rupee only VRE; and the Croatian Luna did not yield any of the 3 microorganisms.
Most banknote papers are manufactured from cotton fibre, giving the notes its strength and distinctive feel. Unlike most printing and writing paper, banknote paper can be blended with polymers to improve its strength. Polymer (or plastic) banknotes were developed to improve durability and prevent counterfeiting through incorporated security features, such as optically variable devices that are extremely difficult to reproduce. In the UK, we now have £5, £10 and £20 pound polymer/plastic notes.
The results from the experiments showed that the polymer structure of the Romanian Leu banknote allowed growth and transmission of the multi-drug resistant bacteria. As a result, the study recommended in 2013 that countries using polymer-based banknotes should take this into consideration, especially if a currency is not exclusively used within one country.
Interestingly, another study (unfortunately not an Ig Nobel Prize winner) that was published in 2014, found the opposite outcome, with cotton papers showing more bacterial growth compared to polymer papers. Because of this variation and difference in their findings they suggested that perhaps the economic status of a country could be associated with the concentration of bacteria on the currency, and it was found that the average number of bacteria detected on banknotes was associated with the economic freedom of banknotes. Perhaps, in economies where more contactless or card payments can be carried out, the banknotes aren’t used as much, producing less risk of contamination.
Dr Bahijja ends this week’s episode by reciting Mary Ellen Davey’s 24/7 lecture on Oral Bacteria from 2010 — give the podcast a listen to find out how it went!
If you have any questions you’d like to be answered by Dr Bahijja, feel free to send them in via the website chat, or email MondayScience2020@gmail.com. You can also send us your questions as a voice message via
https://anchor.fm/mondayscience/message. We love to hear your thoughts!
