At least that's The Why Files image of how an unsung scientist learns he or she has won the (un)coveted Ig Nobel prize. In case you haven't heard, Ig Nobels are awarded every year for "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced." That's the word from Abrahams, a former math and computer guy who's now chief AIR-head (and editor) of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) in Cambridge, Mass.

AIR sponsors the Ig Nobels every year, just as the regular Nobels are being awarded.

A meaning to their madness?
Abrahams says the Ig Nobels are awarded for a couple of reasons. "A lot of people believe they should be honored for something, and if we didn't do it, it wouldn't get done." More seriously, he says, "perhaps it's goofy, but it's a fairly effective way of getting people interested in science who think it's scary or yucky. It's a very underhanded way to seduce people to thinking about science."

Although the awards may sound critical, they usually just quote, without comment, the research in question. Scientists can nominate themselves for the coveted awards. They can also nominate their enemies.

Nonetheless, most winners take the notoriety "pretty well," Abrahams adds. "Quite a few are thrilled, but a couple have been less than delighted." No winner has sued.

Bloodthirsty science
Science that seems absurd can have considerable merit, Abraham notes. Take a recent award to two Norwegian scientists for work on how garlic, ale and sour cream affects the appetite of leeches.

This research may sound sophomoric, but Abraham sees "a ghost of a reason" behind it, since leeches are again being used in medicine to control bleeding during surgery. "Suppose you're doing microsurgery to reattach a finger, what do you do if the leech is not hungry?" The conventional wisdom from 150 years ago, when doctors used lots of leeches, was that garlic, ale and sour cream did stimulate their appetites, so "these intrepid scientists in Norway set out to advance the cause of medicine" by testing that wisdom.

Never mind the Ig's. What did the leeches do?

After they (the leeches, not the researchers) were dunked in beer, they "became lazy, their scientific enthusiasm diminished. Discipline failed, appointments were forgotten, some even ran away on their own." And we're quoting verbatim.

Garlic seems to attract the little bloodsuckers -- and then it kills them. (Could be handy to know on a jungle river...)

Many scientific discoveries originally appeared as irrelevant as the leech study does today, Abrahams observes. "One-hundred plus years ago, doctors were hooted out of medicine for saying you should wash your hands before surgery. Today, in a hospital it's not unusual to find several doctors who wash hands before surgery."

That's a small example of a larger point: science advances by discovering the unexpected. "If you look back, pretty much everything that now seems a great discovery was great because people did not believe it at the time," Abrahams adds.