1Neuticles
Testicle implants exist for dogs. Its inventor Gregg A. Miller won the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine for Neuticles - artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness.
2. The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was jointly presented to Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide, Australia and the University of Toronto, Canada and the Firmenich perfume company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises, Archamps, France; Craig Williams of James Cook University and the University of South Australia; Michael Tyler of the University of Adelaide; Brian Williams of the University of Adelaide; and Yoji Hayasaka of the Australian Wine Research Institute; for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.
3. The 2005 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was presented jointly to Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of the University of Newcastle, in the UK, for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie Star Wars.
4. Three researchers in collaboration with 6 universities were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for Acoustics for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping chalkboards.
5. The 2004 Ig Nobel in Economics was presented to the Vatican for outsourcing prayers to India. With Roman Catholic clergy in short supply, American, Canadian and European churches were sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India.
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6Emptying Bladder
Three researchers won the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for “testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).”
7. In 2003 researcher Jillian Clarke conducted research on the 5-second rule, finding no significant evidence of contamination on public flooring. For her work, she won the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health.
8. In 2009, a team of three Mexican scientists won the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating diamonds out of tequila.
9. The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in Nutritional Science was presented to Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he ate for 35 years.
10. The 2001, Ig Nobel Prize in Biology was presented to Buck Weimer for inventing air-tight underpants that could filter bad-smelling gases through a charcoal filter.
11Belarus State Police
In 2011, Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus made it illegal to applaud in public. Consequently, the 2011 Ig Nobel Peace prize was given to the Belarus State Police for arresting a one-armed man for clapping.
12. Ponytail Shape Equation and Rapunzel number can be used to calculate the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail. It takes into account the stiffness of the hair fibers, the effects of gravity, and the presence of the random curliness of human hair. The study was awarded Ig Nobel in Physics in 2012.
13. In 2001, Televangelists Jack and Rexella Van Impe won the Ig Nobel Prize in Astrophysics “for their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.”
14. In 2015, the Ig Nobel prize under Physiology and Entomology category was awarded to two individuals: Justin Schmidt, for painstakingly creating the Schmidt sting pain index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and to Michael L. Smith, for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm) and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).
15. The 2016 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a group of 7 researchers for measuring the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automobile.
16Charles Foster & Thomas Thwaites
The 2016 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was awarded jointly to Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of and spend time roaming hills of the Alps in the company of goats.
17. A team of four scientists discovered that biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. This research led to them being awarded the Ig Noble Prize in Chemistry for the year 2000.
18. The Pepsi-Cola company of the Philippines won the 1993 Ig Nobel Peace Prize “for sponsoring a contest to create a millionaire and then announcing the wrong winning number, which incited and united 800,000 expectant winners, bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their nation’s history.”
19. Wright Laboratory won the 2007 Ig Noble Peace Prize for “instigating research and development on a chemical weapon” called ‘The Gay Bomb.’ It would be a bomb that when used, discharges female sex pheromones over enemy forces in order to make them sexually attracted to each other.
20. Dr. Elena Bodnar is a Ukrainian physician, who has a US Patent for inventing a brassiere that in an emergency, can act as a pair of protective face masks. She was awarded the Ig Nobel Public Health Prize for it in 2009.
21Chonosuke Okamura
Chonosuke Okamura, a Japanese Paleontologist from the 70s and 80s, gained infamy as a pseudoscientist in his field for misidentifying tiny rocks to be miniature-sized animal fossils. He won the 1996 Ig Nobel Biodiversity Prize after claiming that humans once used to be approximately 3.5mm in height, on average.
22. Behavioral Scientist Gordon Pennycook and his colleagues won the IG Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for their scholarly study called “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullsh*t.” Deepak Chopra’s Twitter feed is included in the references, and supplementary tables include a bullsh*t ranking of some of his tweets.
23. A New York vet named Dr. Robert A. Lopez suspected a connection between cat ear mites and a child’s rash. So he started experimenting by transferring them into his left ear. He said, “I heard scratching sounds... as the mites began to explore my ear canal.” He repeated the experiment twice and won the Ig Nobel Prize in Entomology in 1994.
24. In 2006, the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was awarded to scientists who proved that the odor emanated by Limburger cheese attracted “Anopheles gambiae” mosquitos, mistaking it for the smell of human feet, effectively making Limburger offer protection against Malaria.
25. Psychologist Dan Ariely and his colleagues earned the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine “for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.”
