Overview
- The 36th Ig Nobel awards were staged in Zurich on Thursday with the event’s usual paper‑airplane tosses, one‑minute gag speeches, and theatrical acts.
- Prizes honored a range of odd but methodical studies including Franz Bender’s cotton‑underwear soil test, Ilona Croy’s research on parents preferring baby odor to teen odor, and a urinal redesign that aims to cut splashing.
- A biology prize went to João Miguel Alves‑Nunes’s team for experiments on when venomous snakes bite despite the group’s 2024 paper being retracted by Scientific Reports in 2025 over ethical concerns.
- Organizers said safety and travel barriers for winners and reporters prompted the move from the United States and they announced a rotating international model with Zurich hosting biennially and Antwerp lined up for 2027.
- The ceremony underlines the Ig Nobels’ goal to make people laugh then think while highlighting tensions between public engagement and research ethics that could prompt closer scrutiny of methods and oversight.