The winners at the 32nd annual Ig Nobels ceremony - held a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced - were celebrated virtually via a webcast on the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website, in light of ongoing Covid considerations. Previous Ig Nobel award ceremonies had been held in person at Harvard University.
The winners, honoured in 10 categories, also included scientists who found that when people on a blind date are attracted to each other their heart rates synchronise, and researchers who looked at why legal documents can be so utterly baffling, even to lawyers themselves.
In keeping with Ig Nobel tradition, real Nobel laureates handed out this year's prizes, deploying video trickery to give a sense of the traditional person-to-person interaction. Each Nobel laureate handed a prize off screen, with the winners reaching out to 'accept' the prize, bringing an award statue that they had been sent and self-assembled into view...