 Well, this is the year 2022, the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the third year in a row, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is not at its original home. Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. Me? I am stuck here in the beautiful hills of Tuscany, Italy. You, you are stuck in whatever beautiful place you are stuck in. So this year I will skip the usual theater safety announcements about identifying the nearest exits, silencing all mobile phones and electronic devices, smoking in the theater, etc. This year you can do any damn thing you want. Don't identify the nearest emergency exits. Shout at your cell phone. Eat something. Now, get your paper airplanes ready. I said, get your paper airplanes ready! The 32nd first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is about to begin. Hello? Can anybody hear me? There you are. I'm Robin Abrams. I'm your paper airplane announcer. I also write the misconduct advice column in the Boston Globe about etiquette, engineering, ethics, and of course knowledge. Tonight we will be having three airplane tosses. Does it have to be that definitive? I mean it's 2022, numbers, time, have no meaning. I just don't like to commit on camera. Okay, tonight we'll have three airplane tosses. Get your paper airplanes ready, but do not launch them yet. First of all, welcome to the 32nd first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Paper airplanes ready to launch? Safety first. Launching in five, four, three, two, one. And gentlemen, and well, whoever, welcome to the 32nd first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. And now, Professor Jean Berco Gleason will deliver the traditional Ig Nobel welcome, welcome speech. Good. Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind, es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind. Apollinaire. Belle Journée. Souris du temps, vous rongez peu à peu ma vie. My speech. Welcome, welcome. We are going to award this year's Ig Nobel Prizes. I am Karen Hopkins, creator of the Studmuffins of Science calendar. This year's winners represent many continents and even more countries. Now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, literati, glitterati, pseudo-intellectuals, quasi-seudo-intellectuals, pseudo-quasi-intellectuals, walking encyclopedias, know-it-alls, and the rest of you, may I introduce our master of ceremonies, the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, Chief Airhead, Mark Abrams. Today, we honor some remarkable individuals and groups. Every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people laugh and then makes them think. The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is produced by the magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research. It's also proudly cosponsored by the Harvard Radcliffe Society of Physics students and the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. This is year three of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's also the 32nd year of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Because of the pandemic, instead of doing the ceremony with 1,100 delightful, eccentric people jammed together in a big theater at Harvard University, we're doing the entire ceremony online, wherever that is. Let's refresh your memory or bring you up to speed with a 15-second-long video highlight reel of how we do it when it's not pandemic time. That was pretty quick. The editors of the Annals of Improbable Research have chosen a theme for this year's ceremony. That theme is knowledge. The theme may or may not apply to particular prizes. Tonight, 10 prizes will be given. The achievements speak for themselves all too eloquently. The prizes will be presented to the winners by Nobel Laureates. Ladies and gentlemen and whoever, please welcome the Nobel Laureates. A 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Rich Roberts. The physicists discovered electrons, neutrons, protons, but they missed the morons. A 2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Francis Arnold. I've done this on Zoom now, too many times, so we've got to get back in reality. A 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Marty Chalfee. Oh? A 2019 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Esther Duflo. On Zoom, you might want to say that you want to remove background noise. You want to put back the background noise on Zoom. A 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Eric Maskin. You want to hear the fanfare? A 2018 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Donna Strickland. Unfortunately, I have COVID. Oh, no. I'm going to put on a mask. It's going to be a little bit of a struggle. Oh, Thomas on accordion here is a doctor. Thomas, any miracle cure you can... No, but it reminds me of a song. A 2001 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Barry Sharpless. Okay, I wish I could talk to you in person. And a 1990 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jerome Friedman. Should I put on a jacket? No, no, no. Mark's in a tux now. Very elegant looking Mark here. Yeah. A specially edited audio recording of the ceremony will be broadcast on Public Radio's Science Friday with Ira Fledo on the day after Thanksgiving. Now, let's get it over with, ladies and gentlemen, whoever, the awarding of the 2022 Ig Nobel Prizes. We're giving out ten prizes. The winners come from many nations. This year's winners have truly earned their prizes. Karen and Christopher, please tell them what they've won. This year's winners each get an Ig Nobel Prize. Gosh. And a piece of paper. They get a piece of paper saying they've won an Ig Nobel Prize. A piece of paper is signed by several Nobel Laureates. And the winners get money. Yes, money. They get $10 trillion. $10 trillion. Gosh. A Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill. Gosh. Now, ladies and gentlemen, now I will show you the coveted Ig Nobel Prize. This year's prize is a PDF document that can be emailed, printed, and then assembled to make a container. An empty container? For what purpose? Well, this empty container is a place to store all your knowledge. Your brain, your books, your internet connections. A what? A place to keep your good ideas. Yes. A place to keep all your good ideas. Store them away forever. Inside this flimsy paper container. Gosh. Gosh. I agree with you. The Applied Cardiology Prize. Winners are from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Aruba. The Applied Cardiology Prize is awarded to Aliska Prokashkova, Ilyo Shakshi, Fririka Berens, Daniel Lin, and Mariska Kretz for seeking and finding evidence that when new romantic partners meet for the first time and feel attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize. The prize will be presented by Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin. Let me congratulate you on this astounding and groundbreaking finding. Here is your prize. Thank you. Thank you very much. And also here is your $10 trillion bill. Thank you for the cash. Thank you. But I wonder, what about romantic partners who are familiar with one another? Do they synchronize too? Aliska, do you want to... Yes, it's a really good question. And I think that there is some research demonstrating already that couples who are married do synchronize with each other. And a lot of research has been done that they tend to synchronize during good moments but also bad moments. So when they're fighting, they can synchronize, but also when they're actually really nice to each other. So, yeah, it happens both. Wow. Well, this is really good stuff. Are you going to be following it up? You have a whole future research plan in mind? Yes, I definitely want to follow it up. I'm really interested in the effects of synchrony on human behavior and decision making. And we are looking at effects of cooperation, for example, trust and romantic interest. I think it's a broader human connection mechanism, not even human connection because I think lots of animals have it too. Humans synchronize on so many levels that they're not even aware of. And it's also influencing their decision processes. So it's quite fascinating because we always, or we tend to think that we are rational beings, but actually there are so many unconscious processes that are influencing. Have you ever been on a date and felt butterflies? This immediate spark with someone you just met? The question is, what is this spark? And how do you know that someone's attracted to you? We decided to put this question in test and invited 140 individuals to our dating cabin. When the date started, we measured couples' eye gaze, their facial expressions, their body language. We also tracked their heart rate and sweating responses. So what did we find? As it turns out, no single signal like frequent eye contact, dial or gesture were good predictors of people's attraction. Not even raising heart or sweating were good indicators. And this is because people flirt just to be liked and raising heart can just mean somebody's nervous. So is there a way to measure attraction between two people? What we found was that it was the synchrony between physiological signals that predicted couples' attraction. More the couples synchronized their heart rate and sweating responses with each other. Attracted, they become to each other. If you want to learn more about this research, follow us on social media. The prize is awarded to Eric Martinez, Francis Malica and Edward Gibson for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate Rich Roberts. Well, many congratulations to you. I totally believe in the final results of your survey. For you, here is the Nobel for the Ig Nobel Prize for 2022. Many, many congratulations. And here also is your $10 trillion bill. Let me ask you to finish up, let me ask each of the three of you, because this is the literature prize. Do each of you have one final word on the subject? A single word? Single word. Superfluous. What are you, Eric? Frank? I was going to say gratuitous. A good one. I guess I'll say esoteric. Rich, any final word on this? I have two words deliberately complicated. Why is legal language so hard to understand? We set out by comparing the language in legal documents things that people actually read and what people are actually saying. It turns out legal texts contain far more difficult to process features than other language. To evaluate whether these factors affect people's comprehension and retention, we conducted an experiment. We had people read a simplified contract excerpt or a legalese version. We found that people had worse comprehension and retention of the legalese. While this may not be shocking, it's important to know how difficult these features make language processing and why it's happening in the first place. This way we can advocate for tractable and beneficial changes to society. Now here's a musical treat, the world premiere of a new mini opera called the Know-it-all Club. It's an opera about a club and the members of the club, well, as far as we know, they know it all. That's what they tell us, that's what they tell each other. We don't really know what they tell themselves, but maybe, maybe, we'll find out. There are four acts. One act now, two acts later, one after that. And now, I believe I see them coming. Yes, now it's time for us to turn attention to the Know-it-all narrators. Oh, let me tell you about the opera. The opera is called the Know-it-all Club. Well, now let me tell you all about the characters in this opera. Why, each of the characters is a member of the Know-it-all Club. Well, let me tell you about the plot. Every character plots many different ways to make it clear that they are the only person in the Know-it-all Club who knows anything. Well, let me tell you, it's not much of an opera. Here's act one. The members of the Know-it-all Club have a lot of knowledge about each other. Oh, look, two old friends have just run into each other. Oh, I bet they're going to swap some knowledge. And maybe a little vitriol. Everything, that's what we hear when you tune the guitar so soft. Who say is your favorite thing you sell? Oh, sis friend, I'm a self-helpful. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Everyone can sing, the action is okay. The biology prize. The Ig Nobel Biology Prize. The winners are from Brazil and Columbia. The biology prize is awarded to Solomere Garcia Hernandez and Glauco Machado for studying whether and how constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions. The prize will be presented to them by Nobel Laureate Jerry Friedman. It is my great pleasure and honor to award you this prize for your very fundamental work. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a great honor. You're very, you're very welcome. And here is your $10 trillion bill. Look, Mark, two bills. It's inflation. That's right. Yeah, Rich. It's a very nice scorpion you have there. Yes. And it's also very special. Please explain. Okay. She's a female scorpion. And when she is grated by the pale. Imagine that my hand is a predator and the predator is grabbing this cork and tail. And the scorpion is trying to run away. So this. And that is what's happened. Look at this. And at this part of the tail, it's the anus. And by losing this part of the anus, the individual, the scorpion is unable to defecate for the rest of its life. Yes. A scar blocks completely the digestive system. And the animal gets constipated for life. Yeah. But they can still, still alive for several months. And they made, and they succeeded to generate new scorpions. Yes. So it's a nice. Wonderful. Jerry, do you have any questions for them about this? Yes, I was wondering, you know, with a lost detail, and actually having this constant constipation. I was wondering how the scorpion is able to attract the mate. Oh, this is a very interesting question. And I think the. The constipation is not very important during the courtship process. So males are still very attractive. They are able here to, to entice the female to calculate with them. Yes. And the females are able to produce offspring, but a little less offspring. Because they are full of feces inside them. Thank you. That's a very interesting answer. Right now, many animals are doing their best to avoid becoming food. In some species, individuals even sacrifice a body part to increase their chances of surviving a predatory attack. In South America, left the scorpion that can release its tail when grabbed by a potential predator. Consequently, they lose important structures such as the stinger used to inject venom and the anus. When this happens, a scar blocks the digestive system, and because the tail never grows back, tailless individuals suffer from constipation for the rest of their lives. To understand how scorpions cope with tail loss, we performed several experiments and found that, in the long term, tailless and constipated individuals become slower. Moreover, because it is very hard to paralyze large animals without using venom, tailless scorpions can only capture a small prey. Surprisingly, the courtship of males is not affected after tail loss, and females may even give birth, although they have fewer babies than usual. Therefore, releasing the tail to survive is worth it. Finally, we thank our funders and everybody who helped us explain the evolution of such an amazing and improbable behavior. Now get set for the 24-7 lectures. We have invited several of the world's top thinkers to tell us, very briefly, what they are thinking about. Each 24-7 lecturer will explain their subject twice. First, a complete technical description in 24 seconds, and then, after a brief pause, a clear summary that anyone can understand in 7 words. The 24-second time limit will be enforced by various means. Okay, all set? Yep. Okay, pigeons or pigeons? Birds, are you all set? Good. Are you good? This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Rosemary Moscoe, naturalist and author of the book A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching. Her topic, pigeons. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. City pigeons, also known as rats with wings, are birds that many people find boring or disgusting, but their history is surprising. Domesticated millennia ago in the Middle East for food and the fertilizer provided by their poop, they were prized pets of royalty. The species is native to certain parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. All birds outside that area and most within are mutts, descended from purebred birds. They made for life, dance to impress, and are so much more than rats with wings, no offense to rats. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. City pigeons descend from beloved domestic animals. This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Dr. Thomas Michele, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. His topic, medical knowledge. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. Medical knowledge comes from basic biomedical research, translational research, clinical research, molecular model, computer models, cellular models, animal models, and studies of human populations and human patients all seeking to understand disease in order to prevent diagnosis and treat illness. Medical knowledge is a summation of centuries of observation, inspiration, speculation, experimentation before coming to a conclusion, but sometimes even into confusion, despite careful execution to find the solution. And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. Not perfect, but beats bogus medical knowledge. This 24-7 lecture will be delivered by Edward Tufti, professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University and pioneer of ways to show things to people if you actually want those people to understand what they're seeing. His topic in formation. First, a complete technical description of the subject in 24 seconds. On your mark, get set, go. The machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep think reproducibility crisis undermines predictive paradigm credibility. We must boost leakage taxonomy, ground truth spreadsheets interdisciplinary exchange, and best practice paradigms in learning psychology. 500 machine learning and AI papers were published in a year. Half... And now a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words. On your mark, get set, go. At last, we do not know which half. The medicine prize. The winners are from Poland. The medicine prize is awarded to Marcen Jasiński, Martina Masiewska, Anna Brodziak, Michael Gorka, Kamila Skierowska, Jezław Jeźwetak, Anieszka Tomieczewska, Gregorz Basek, and Emilian Snarski for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure. The prize will be presented to the winners by Nobel Laureate Barry Sharpless. Well, I wish you all... Much fame from your discovery. It's very humane discovery, and it's also right in the middle of things that happen every day. It's very unusual to make discoveries like this, and I wonder who... You can have the idea, but you can't easily infect it in the system. So the system is very resistant to things like this. So I wonder if Poland is more open-minded and you had no trouble implementing your idea. Before we get the answer, Barry, don't forget to give them their prize. Oh, the prize. Okay, so I'm going to give you your prize now. It's a very exotic prize. It's a little bit fragile this way. Great. Thank you. And also... And here is your $10 trillion bill. That just happens. I would like to say this because he asked about the obstacles in the project. What were the obstacles? That was your question. And the only obstacle was that the men that worked in the hospital cafeteria were willing to donate the ice cream for free for our patients. So I would like to send special thanks to the owner of the hospital cafeteria for providing the ice cream for our patients, comfortably for free. And we needed a lot of ice cream for those patients. It has to be done. Thank you for the award. This work is about preventing a common complication of Kaido's chemotherapy that you use prior to the bone marrow transplantation. You can prevent bucozitis by sucking ice cubes. But who wants to suck ice cubes for many hours? We discovered that actually you can use ice cream, cool the mucosal tissue and get the same effect. So we would like to thank our restaurant for providing us with free ice cream for this work. I would like to also thank all of the members of our team who first made sure that every patient prior to the transplant got the ice cream to prevent bucozitis and later prepared the publication and were able to publish it with high impact factor. So thank you all and remember ice cream to prevent bucozitis. It's not an ignoble joke. It's actually evidence-based medicine. Thank you for the award. The Engineering Prize. The winners are from Japan. The Engineering Prize is awarded to Gen Matsuzaki, Kazua Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura for trying to discover the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob. The prize will be presented by Nobel Laureate Barry Sharpless. Congratulations for your marvelous work on how we humans interface with our devices. Thank you. Wow. And also your 10 trillion dollar bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As an older person, I'm really happy about your work on knobs. But there are so few knobs for control anymore. Does this mean knobs may be making a comeback? Anyway, who made you interested in knobs? Dr. Sharpless, may I ask you to do me a favor? Sure. Could you please pinch your nose? Do what? Pinch your nose. Pinching? Yeah, nose. Yeah. And turn it. Oh. Why did you do your two fingers? Why? Oh, because, yeah, because of what you told me, the scale is right. And the experience of having done it many times, right? Three would work, but two is enough. Yeah, I don't know. Is that the answer? Is it unconscious? Oh, it's unconscious. Yes. Unconscious. It's so interesting, isn't it? This is our research. I agree. It's very interesting. I'm very honored to receive this wonderful award. I'm a design researcher and also a product designer. How many fingers do you use to pinch and turn anything of this size? How about this? How about this? And how about this? We have statistically clarified the answer of these questions. The diameter that changes from 2 to 3 is 10 to 11 mm. From 3 to 4 is 23 to 26 mm. And from 4 to 5 is 45 to 50 mm. Furthermore, aligning the thumb point straight, the other four fingers draw quadratic curves. In the field of design, there are many researchers studying such an unconscious human behavior. I hope that more designers will receive this award. Thank you very much. It's time for Act 2 of the Mini Opera the Know-it-all Club. Time has passed in the Know-it-all Club. Time passes slowly there. There's a lot of information to exchange and a lot of people who know a lot of things and a lot of people who know that the important thing about their coming every day is that they make sure that everyone else in the Know-it-all Club knows how much they themselves know. Very briefly, would anyone like reading material? I've read it, of course. Now, let us turn our attention to the Know-it-all narrators. The members of the Know-it-all Club, well, they know a lot of words. Maybe that's all they know. Well, this song is about one special word that they use all the time. The word is, listen carefully now, epistemology. E-P-I-S-T-E-M-ology. Epistemology. Do you know what that word means? I sure don't. Well, let's listen to a member of the Know-it-all Club and try to remember what it means. Now, please enjoy this brief intermission. We hope you have enjoyed this brief intermission. The Art History Prize. The winners are from the Netherlands, Guatemala, the USA, and Austria. The Art History Prize is awarded to Peter Dismet and Nicholas Helmuth for their study called A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery. The prize will be presented to them by Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo. Hello, Nicholas. I want to congratulate you for research that is path-breaking, boundary-breaking, and also shows your great courage in putting yourself in the line of fire to collect the best and most rigorous scientific data on the subject. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. And here is your $10 trillion bill. Money is like honey. Thank you. I do have one question, which is more on the scientific process that led to the meeting of your two minds. As you point out, it's a multidisciplinary project that breaks boundaries between fields. How do you even come to forge this collaboration and work from the chemistry or pharmacology science to the anthropology? Because I like to share. I like to share what I know with other people and learn from them and they learn from me. And I must emphasize that Nicholas indeed did share quite a lot. But this farce is now in the Metropolitan Museum. When I had a chance to look at it in the real situation, I saw that this guy who is giving himself an enema is pushing one of his fingers or his thumb exactly on the hole. So by opening the hole or closing the hole, he can influence the flow of the enema going in. Absolutely correct. That's why we put this hole in here. And we think there's some kind of a thing in here that you press down like a bolt. You're totally correct. But through the reading of Mayak Leafs on these farces, we know that there was an alcoholic beverage inside. And the alcoholic beverage taken rectally is something which still happens today. There are case reports in the literature from the United States, from Italy, from Japan. All people who took a high concentration of alcohol and then it doesn't go very well down there. It burns too much. Have you tried this yourself? Yes, but my supervisor said, don't go over 10% of alcohol because otherwise you will have the same problem and you will end up in the literature as well. There are two explanations that I have found which make it likely. One is, and that is the discovery by Nicholas, that there is formating going on in certain enemas. And if you formate it, you can't keep it in. And then a rectal administration is much better. The second clue that I found comes from the Shifaro Indians. You know the shrunken heads in South America. They have a really potent hallucinogenic drink that is to be taken by boys who have to become men and full members of the tribe. All the men of the tribe are in line in two lines and each novice must go from one man to the other to have a sip of the drink. But usually this is so intoxicating that they don't get to the end of the line and because it's essential that they bond with every member, the rest of the members give the drink as an enema. So that is a ritual. So there is a pharmacological reason to do it and there is a ritual reason to do it. Guys, wow, it's really, really, I'm really happy. Thank you very much. I want to thank all the people that have helped me for many years. I'm going to get rid of my traditional professor outfit and I'm going to put on my kakao outfit and we're going to talk about enemas. These are the enema jugs. These are the syringes. Of course, an enema syringe has this thing sticking out, goes up to tail end. There's another gourd but these are using instruments. We've made one out of a kamote, a sweet potato. And these are the same size and shape of actual enema. I would like to thank the people behind the IG Noble Prize. The late Emile Delataye for drawing my attention to Maya enema rituals. The late Frans Nelemans for his willingness to supervise a most unusual thesis. My co-author Nicholas for his willingness to share his iconographic archive and expertise. And last but not least, my wife Anita, who endured a long bout of do not disturb me just before I went. And now it is time for the second paper airplane deluge. In five, four, three, two, one... Here is a strange piece of knowledge for you. The IG Noble Prize ceremony essentially has no funding. Before COVID-19, nearly all of the funding for the IG Noble Prize ceremony came from ticket revenues. But during these pandemic years, we cannot do this ceremony in a crowded theater. So there are no ticket revenues. And we have no real financial sponsor. No public-spirited institutions. No trillionaires. No billionaires. Not even any millionaires. Amazing, huh? Also, we invite you. We invite you, dear guest, whether you are an institution or a trillionaire or a billionaire or just a millionaire, we invite you to please donate a little money or a lot. Help us keep the IG Noble Prizes alive and well for next year and into the future. Donate at our website, improbable.com. And now... The Physics Prize. The winners are from China, the UK, Turkey, and the USA. The Physics Prize is awarded to Frank Fisch, Germing Yuan, Minglu Chen, Leibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Attila Insicic. For trying to understand how ducklings manage to swim in formation. The prize will be presented to them by Nobel Laureate Marty Chalfee. So I am very excited about this prize. I have to say that it might actually have a secondary name. I think it should be called the Robert McCluskey Prize because there's many people in the United States know that he wrote a very famous children's book called Make Way for Ducklings. And it's nice to know how they actually make their way. There's a fascinating set of papers. I really enjoyed them. I have a lot of questions, which maybe we'll talk about offline. I wanted to know... This is great about duckling swimming, but why did they follow the parents in a straight line when they're walking? I guess that'll be your next paper. In any case, I'm really delighted to be able to present you all with this wonderful Nobel Prize for 2022. So congratulations to all of you. And here is your $10 trillion bill. I can get that surgery I need. Marty, you said you have some questions about this. I was intrigued by the statement of maybe these ideas could be applied to transport of shipping lanes by having basically ships in tow behind each other. And I sort of wanted to know what sort of advantages does that do? Have we been making oil tankers? The world been making oil tankers all the wrong way that they should be actually smaller rather than one big large container ship? Sure. So that is an interesting question. So we are naval architects. We have a very big naval architecture team here. We are trying to bring this idea to the naval architects area. So we try to make the ships smaller, but smart, just like the maneuver of the ducklings. So we have just one big one in front, but they can bring a train. We call that idea probably the sea tram. So we can save a lot of energy. So that is something we learn from these ducklings. Or else have the boats go behind the mother ducks? Yeah. Yeah. We need to go behind the mother boats. That's the other idea. We can make the ships in duck shape from now on. And then big ship, you know, duck shapes, smaller ships in duck shapes, they follow each other. But I think, you know, really, there are a lot of applications, as Yiming mentioned, other area of application, of course, in warships, when they are, you know, traveling in convoy, and they can certainly follow the pattern that, you know, even in the paper so that they can save fuel. But in that case, would they be sitting ducks? Yes. That's right. A quick question for all of you winners. This is really an award that's going jointly to two sets of people. First is Frank who did his work, what, 20 or 30 years ago. And then everybody else, the team that has done their work recently. Do the two groups completely agree on what you discovered? Frank, I think we couldn't reach agreement at the moment. Looking for controversy here. The idea of surfing ducks is, I think, interesting and plausible. And that's what the group paper showed. I take a little different view, or maybe something that's synergistic there is a vorticity swirling masses of water that help propel all the ducks. The main thing that we come in a full agreement on is that there is a mechanism or maybe several mechanisms in which the ducklings can get a real advantage to swimming one behind the other. I want to thank the Ig Nobel committee for this most prestigious award. I definitely feel like a lucky duck, and it is the ducks that have, for some time, been a major focus of my research and that of others. There are a lot of people that went into this, and I can thank them, but I just don't have the time, nor do I want to do it, which is sort of foul on my part. But let me just say, this is not my swan song. I will continue to waddle on and not be quacked up about it and feel like a dead duck. But let me just say to everyone, you're not doing science if you're not having fun. You may probably see the ducklings are following the mother duck in a single fine line in our daily life. Why are they doing so? We tried to find the reasons behind this phenomenon. We calculated the wave resistance on ducklings when swimming information. We found when the duckling swims at a certain sweet point behind their mother, the mother duck's waves help to prepare the ducklings forward. The ducklings are serving the waves generated by their mother to save energy. More surprisingly, we found that this way-flying benefit could be sustained by the rest of the ducklings when swimming in a single fire. Each duckling behaves as a wave passer, passing the wave energy to the trailing one. The first two ducklings right behind the mother duck receive the best pushing force. From the third ducklings in the queue, each individual save the same amount of energy regardless of blue size. It seems like the wave-riding and wave-passing are the principal reasons that waterfall swim and this wing. The Peace Prize! The winners are from China, Hungary, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, and the USA. The Peace Prize is awarded to Junhui Wu, Shabolch Samedo, Pat Barkley, Bianca Bersma, Terrence Dorres Cruz, Sergio LaYakano, Annika Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Shepiorka, Leo Tioken, and Paul Van Lange. For developing an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie. The prize will be presented to them by Nobel Laureate Francis Arnold. It's my great honor to present this award to you because your work shines a light on the critical role of gossip in maintaining world peace. After all, gossip is the basis of promoting and sustaining cooperation and your profound work gives us rules to live by, how to give and receive, and whether it's likely to be true or not. For this, I award you the Ignobel Prize in Peace. And here is your $10 trillion bill. Now, I do have a question for you. I mean, your models are truly fascinating, but let's talk experiments. Where are your data sources? And does Facebook, the UK Daily Mail, I mean the National Enquirer, and their readers, do they provide you a mechanism for testing these models? Or is there a central repository of gossip data? Or maybe, you know, I've got a mother-in-law you could meet. We spend a lot of time hanging out in bars listening. I have some exciting news. We won the Ignobel Prize for a mobile on Honest and this one is Gossip. Why us? It must be because a mathematical model on Gossip makes you first smile and then think. Gossip is important in social life and it's how we learn about others' good or bad actions and it's crucial for human cooperation. The latest gossip is that we receive the Ignobel Prize. Is this gossip honest or misleading? I trust it. I want to prove it. Yay! Sometimes we form a larger others, or models just so gossip can be honest or dishonest depending on how much the value that is and the recipients of gossip. Hey, I heard our research got the Ignobel Prize. I don't know if I trust this. We're mistaken as believing that. We are friends. I care about you. According to our model, I'll only tell you the truth. Okay, I believe it now. Our paper with Junwe got the Nobel Prize. Wow! If so, we should definitely work with her again. But I know that you value her, Paul, and this story really benefits her. Is it really true? Well, okay, I may have been slightly dishonest. Overall, our model is the most brilliant paper in the last 50 years. Okay, now that's dishonest. It's time for Act 3 of the Mini Opera, the Know-It-All Club. The members of the Know-It-All Club. They must know a lot about each other and they must know a lot about friendship and kindness and diplomacy. Actually, I find you boring, also. Let's turn our attention to our Know-It-All narrators. The members of the Know-It-All Club love to play games. Oh, it's a very personal challenge. A very personal challenge. Tell me something, tell me something. Nothing's gonna change that though. How I pity you. You know nothing, I agree. Know-It-All pity. Facts are not your cup of tea. Oh, how I pity you. Stuff that you don't know makes for misery. Your ignorant, don't worry though. Hey, you can just ask me. Are the guests seems like you just don't know? Who's been sleeping with your spouse? Tell me, really, do they do it in your house? Things that you just don't know. Stuff that you don't know makes for misery. Your ignorant, don't worry though. Hey, you can just ask me. Stupid hats seems like you just don't know. How repulsive is your face? Oh, yeah, really. You're the family disgrace. Things that you just don't know. Stuff that you don't know. Ignorant, don't worry though. Hey, you can just ask me. In space, no one can hear you scream. That's a good thing sometimes. Third, paper airplane launch in five. Four, three, two, one. Let's go. Excuse me, I have been reliably informed that we are not finished throwing paper airplanes. So, paper airplanes ready to launch? Okay. In five, four, three, two, one. The economics prize winners are from Italy. The Ig Nobel Prize for economics is awarded to Alessandro Ploucchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda for explaining mathematically why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest. The prize will be presented to them by Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland. Thank you very much. I've been successful in my career, and I think it's because I've always been born under a lucky star. And so it's nice to see that you gentlemen have now explained it quantitatively how come how much luck was involved in getting me where I am. And so obviously you're lucky too. Today I'm not so lucky because I have COVID. Because I'm not there giving it to you. But I am here to give you your Ig Nobel Prize that is filled with all kinds of things, including some luck. Here we go. Very thanks. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. An honor for us. And here is your $10 trillion bill. That's very interesting. Wow. And I'd like to mention that for two of the winners, this is the second time they have won an Ig Nobel Prize. Maybe you could give us a quick summary of the first time you did it. Yeah, the first time that we just did some numerical simulation to simulate the principle. Yes, exactly. And then the last piece that you have an inefficient and competent people at the top of the group, and in order to face to solve this problem, you have to adopt random promotions. Yes, a lot of promotions with demonstrated mathematically that you improve the efficiency of your organization. So it's quite funny, but it's true. Maybe someone in the world probably will apply the, apply this strategy. We have a lot of examples of that. Winners, do you have perhaps a quick question that you would like to ask? If you remember some moment in particular in which some external random influence opportunity was very useful for your career. For the discovery. Well, I always say that I'm not smarter than the other guys in the group when I did this work. And I didn't work harder than the other guys in the group. I was the only one trying to do a high intensity laser. So I'm the one who got to do the Nobel Prize winning work. So it was just the luck of the draw. Okay, good. Well, and Donna Strickland, do you have any questions you would like to ask the success and luck people? Okay, but is luck enough or do you still need some success and some hard work? No, it's not enough. You need some talent. But of course you could be very talented and very unlucky. And then you are hopeless. But this doesn't mean that you have to wait for luck. I mean, you have to move and to look for lucky opportunities. That's our message. Our starting point. Which is the most important factor to reach success? Talent or luck? On one end, talent like IQ and other human features as a Gaussian distribution. On the other hand, measuring success with money, one finds a power law distribution of wealth with many poor people and a very few billionaires as discovered by Pareto many years ago. So could luck be the missing factor to get a very big success? To answer this question, we simulated the careers of thousands of people in a virtual world for all random luck opportunities and bad accidents. The simple dynamics of our computational model reproduces the real Pareto's law and also shows that moderately talented but very lucky individuals are always much more successful than very talented but unlucky ones. We also showed that it's possible to adopt efficient redistribution strategies in order to fable that's success of the most talented people and to foster new ideas. The safety engineering prize, the Ig Nobel Prize for Safety Engineering is awarded to a researcher from Sweden. The prize is awarded to Magnus Gents for developing a moose crash test dummy. The prize will be presented by Nobel laureate, Marty Chalford. Thank you. Magnus, it's a real pleasure to meet you and to be able to present you with this prize. I wondered about the angle of incidence of the moose to the car. If that made a difference in terms of the crash results. Most drivers, they try to pass the moose in front of the moose because that's just what feels most natural at that point in time. But they underestimate the pace that the moose can set whenever they decide to try to cross the road. So what would be actually the successful way in how to behave as a driver whenever you're in a close encounter with a moose is try to steer the course towards the lighter end of the rear end of the moose. I see, thank you. So it is my great honor to present you with this Ig Nobel Prize and congratulations. Thank you so much. I'm truly honored and proud to receive this prize. And Magnus, here is your $10 trillion bill. Ah, even more. Nice, not bad. Tell us about that sign behind you. Well, actually this is a sign. It's quite common to see it by the roads in Sweden. I received this as some sort of memorabilia from the team that were actually on the Swedish National Road Safety Institute where I conducted the project. So it's something I keep to remember those times from and also to try to remember to stay safe on the roads. Magnus, have you yourself ever had a collision with a moose or come near to having a collision? Actually, I would have to say that I've never been close to hit one. Marty, you? No, I haven't, fortunately. But now I know what to do. Hi guys, this is Magnus Gens from the Swedish West Coast, really close to the automotive mecca of Gothenburg in Sweden. First of all, I would like to thank Markwood team for this fantastic recognition and to also tell you how big of an energy boost it is to accept this price. When I first started out, this was a really important topic that we knew very little about. And what's also important to understand is that the whole outset of creating this moose crushed as dummies to understand what kind of damages can be done to vehicles by these large animals out on the Swedish roads or not only Swedish roads, but all the parts in the world where these big animals reside. So, thanks once again for this fantastic recognition and yeah, take care. The new Ig Nobel Prize winners will give free public talks to explain if they can what they did and why they did it. In non-pandemic years, we do this at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This year, we'll do it online. In the weeks and the months following this ceremony, we invite you to watch those lectures in the coming months on our website, improbable.com. Now, we know that you know that it's time for the thrilling conclusion to the mini opera, the Know It All Club, the members of the Know It All Club. What do these good people know? Is there anything they do not know? Let's find out. Well, the one thing the members of the Know It All Club do know is a lot of words. I'm afraid there's simply nothing we can do to stop them from telling us what they know. So friends, let us thrill in the knowledge that this is the thrilling conclusion to tonight's opera. Let's take and there's history. Opera performers, the Know It All Orchestra on piano, even Gusev. On piano, Yulia Yun. On accordion, Dr. Thomas Michelle. The narrators, Karen Hopkins and Christopher Hopkins, the soloist, Ted Sharp, Jupiter Montalvo, and soloist and the opera director, Maria Ferrante. And now, Professor Jean Berco Gleason will deliver the traditional Ig Nobel. Goodbye, goodbye speech. Goodbye. Goodbye. Normally, at this point, we ask everyone in the ceremony to gather at the front of the stage, please, for a pointless photo opportunity. With the pandemic, that's not possible. So instead, here's a 10 second long look back at tonight's ceremony. We put together this year's ceremony with a lot of very knowledgeable people. Take a look at what they did. Here's a five second long look back at tonight's ceremony. If you'd like to help the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony continue, maybe for another 32 years, please donate a little money. And if you want to discover more things, things that make you laugh and think, please subscribe to our magazine, The Annals of Improbable Research. You can do both those things at our website, improbable.com. We hate to say goodbye, goodbye. So just before we finish, here is a one second long look back at tonight's ceremony. We hope, we hope that next year the pandemic will have been tamed, damn it. And we can do the 33rd first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony with all of us back together at Sanders Theater. Now, on behalf of the Harvard Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, and especially from all of us at Improbable Research, if you didn't win an Ig Nobel Prize tonight, and especially if you did, better luck next year. Good night.