In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely of directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel Prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses.
After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found that the animals absorbed oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that supports a clinical trial to see if the procedure can treat respiratory failure.
The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel Awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, then think”. They should not be confused with the more lucrative and career-changing Nobel Prizes to be awarded next month in Scandinavia.
The latest crop of Ig Nobel winners received their awards Thursday at a ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The event featured actual Nobel laureates to hand out the prizes, “24/7” lectures in which experts first explained their topic in 24 seconds, then in seven words, and paper fly tossing galore.
Other work honored on the night included US research into housing pigeons in missiles to help guide them to their targets; British investigations which found that claims of extreme age tend to come from areas that have a short life expectancy and a historical lack of birth certificates, and a French study which found that scalp hair tends to be in a clockwise direction to rotate, although less so in the southern hemisphere.
The Japanese researchers became interested in whether people with breathing problems could benefit from having oxygen pumped up their backsides after noticing that some animals, such as loaches, can use their intestines to breathe. They started the work during the Covid crisis when many hospitals were desperately short of mechanical ventilators to support breathing in people with severe infections.
The team’s experiments, which earned the Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology, showed that mice, rats and pigs can absorb oxygen into the bloodstream when delivered via the rectum, thereby supporting normal breathing. Write in the journal Med in 2021Ryo Okabe at Tokyo Medical and Dental University and colleagues described how “enteral ventilation” offers “a new paradigm” to help patients in respiratory failure.
Dr. Takanori Takebe, an author of the study at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, admitted he had “mixed feelings” when he heard about the award, but warmed to it when he learned it was being recognized for it makes people laugh and then think. If it sparked interest in enteral ventilation, he said, “I’d be so happy.” The team is conducting a phase 1 trial in human volunteers.
Dr Saul Newman at the University of Oxford won the demography prize for showing that many claims of people living unusually long lives come from places with short lifespans, no birth certificates, and where clerical errors and pension fraud abundant. “Extreme age records are a statistical basket case,” he said. “From the level of individual cases, to broad population patterns, virtually none of our age data makes sense.”
Prof Roman Khonsari, a craniofacial surgeon at the Necker-Enfants Malades University Hospital in Paris, and colleagues won the anatomy prize for their global study of hair follicles. While scalp hair spirals in a clockwise direction in most people, according to their research, there is more counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere.
“I was in surgery when I got the call,” Khonsari said. “I was very happy because, despite the undeniable irrelevance of this study, I am convinced that deciphering patterns in nature can lead to important discoveries about fundamental developmental mechanisms. Shapes carry interesting amounts of information.”
The discovery led to comparisons with tornadoes, which typically rotate in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres. Write in the Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgerythe researchers theorized that the Coriolis effect, whereby the Earth’s spin deflects winds to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere, may be at work. Not that Khonsari believes it. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s a plausible hypothesis,” he said.
The other winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes
Peace
Awarded to the late BF Skinner, an American psychologist, for investigating the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide them to their targets. The project, which Skinner himself described as “crackpot”, was dropped despite a perfect demonstration involving a pigeon trained to target features on the New Jersey shoreline. “The spectacle of a live pigeon carrying out its task, however beautiful, merely reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was,” Skinner wrote.
Botany
Given to Jacob White in the USA and Felipe Yamashita in Germany for reporting evidence that the South American plant Boquila trifoliolata can imitates the leaves of plastic plants it is juxtaposed, leading them to conclude that “plant vision” is a plausible hypothesis.
Medicine
Win by a Swiss, German and Belgian group to demonstrate this fake medicines that cause painful side effects may be more effective in patients as fake medicine that does not cause painful side effects.
Physics
Awarded to James Liao at the University of Florida for a comprehensive, multiple–publication investigation into the swimming ability of a dead trout.
Probability
Shared by a team of 50 researchers, mostly Dutch, who flipped 350,757 coins to test a hypothesis put forward by Persi Diaconis, a former magician and professor of statistics at Stanford University. They work Diaconis’ prediction supported that coins tossed are (slightly) more likely to end up the same way up as they started.
Chemistry
Another win for the Netherlands, with a team in Amsterdam using chromatography to separate drunk and sober wormsall in the name of polymer science.
Biology
Another posthumous award, the Ig Nobel in biology, honored the late Fordyce Ely and William Petersen for their 1940 investigation of factors affecting the production of milk in dairy herds. Writing in the Journal of Animal Science, the pair described how they placed a cat on the back of a cow and repeatedly exploded paper bags to see if milk flow changed. The startled cows seemed to release less milk. “The scary part was first in placing a cat on the cow’s back and exploding paper bags for two minutes every 10 seconds,” the researchers wrote. “Later the cat was omitted as unnecessary.”
