The Ig Nobel Prizes are an annual awards ceremony parodying the Nobel Prizes. They seek to honour scientific research which "first makes you laugh, then makes you think". Founder Marc Abrahams has appeared on the QI Elves' podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, and many of the podcast's facts are related to Ig Nobel-winning research, or research carried out by Abrahams' team.
Mentions[]
- Marc Abrahams appears in Episode 6: No Such Thing As One Direction in North Korea.
- In this episode, Andrew Hunter Murray mentions a historical method of using postage stamps to measure erection during sleep. A similar study won an Ig Nobel Prize for Reproductive Medicine 2018.
- In Episode 10: No Such Thing As A Soggy Monk, the awards are mentioned in relation to 2003 Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner Lal Bihari, who was falsely declared dead.
- In Episode 11: No Such Thing As A Doorknob in Vancouver, the awards are mentioned in relation to winning research from 1997 which showed that elevator music cured the common cold.
- In Episode 22: No Such Thing As A Magic Camel Filter, Abrahams and the Ig Nobel team are mentioned as once having tried to send a helium balloon through the post.
- In Episode 23: No Such Thing As A Yawning Psychopath, the awards are mentioned in relation to a 2011 Physiology Prize-winning study that showed no evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise.
- In Episode 25: No Such Thing As A Randy Rat In Polyester Pants, Anna Ptaszynski's headline fact is that rats wearing polyester underwear do not get erections. This won the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize for Reproduction.
- In Episode 53: No Such Thing As A 300km Tall Statue of Liberty, it is mentioned that the QI Elves are on tour with Abrahams.
- In Episode 75: No Such Thing As Diarrhoea Drive, James Harkin mentions the 1992 winners of the Ig Nobel Prize in Archaeology: the Éclaireurs de France. This group of scouts scrubbed off prehistoric cave paintings, believing them to be graffiti.
- In Episode 80: No Such Thing As A Mousetrap-Remote-Control, the levitation of a frog using an electromagnet is discussed. This won the Physics Prize in 2000.
- In Episode 84: No Such Thing As A Donkumentary, the guest Karl Kruszelnicki won the 2002 Prize in Interdisciplinary Research for a survery into human belly button fluff.
- In Episode 133: No Such Thing As Paranoid Ants, Dan Schreiber's fact won the Reproduction Prize in 2016.
- In Episode 151: No Such Thing As A Komodo Dragon Restaurant, Ptaszynski's fact comes from an understudy of David Hu, who won the Physics Prize in 2015.
- In Episode 162: No Such Thing As Catastrophic Shoelaces, Harkin mentions the 2008 Physics Prize winners, who proved that things over a certain length will inevitably tangle.
- In Episode 165: No Such Thing As A Spider The Size Of A Sheep, Harkin and Murray again mention David Hu's research which won the 2015 Physics Prize.
- In Episode 219: No Such Thing As Jeremiah Wingdings, Harkin and Schreiber say that Abrahams gave them some neuticles, the winner of the 2005 Medicine Prize, to hold.