Editorial: The lighter side of science

Friday, Oct. 12, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

Preceding this week's announcement of the Nobel Prize winners, a group of Nobel laureates gathered at Harvard to take part in a ceremony honoring a type of scientific work that is overlooked in Stockholm, Sweden.

They were in Cambridge, Mass., to award the Ig Nobel prizes, which laud laughable work. This year's winners included the Air Force for exploring research on a so-called "gay bomb" to make enemy troops so irresistible to each other they couldn't fight and a group of Argentine researchers who found that hamsters recover more quickly from jet lag when they take Viagra.

The tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony includes skits and songs that puncture the stuffy veil of science, which is exactly how the awards' sponsors want it. (Acceptance speeches longer than 60 seconds are greeted by a little girl - Miss Sweety Poo - who whines, "Please stop. I'm bored!")

Merely laughing at, or mocking, the research and the awards, however, misses the point. Sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, the awards recognize "achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think."

The Ig Nobel organizers say the prizes are "intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology."

Laughter is the foundation for the Ig Nobel awards' celebration of curiosity. The scientists understand this. Winners, who come from around the world, pay their own way to pick up an Ig Nobel. They say they receive, believe it or not, positive recognition and a level of respect among their peers.

Research sometimes has strange results, but good work can open up the world to new possibilities. Lab "mistakes" have led to everything from penicillin to Post-it Notes.

In America, which trails much of the industrialized world in scientific achievement among high school students, it is important to celebrate and encourage scientific curiosity. The lesson in the Ig Nobels is: Exploration is laudable, even when the results are funny.