The Ig Nobel awards are a silly spoof of the notorious Nobel Prizes, and this year certainly saw some interesting winners. Winners are asked to make a one-minute-long speech on a Harvard University stage that is good enough to keep an eight-year-old girl from booing them off.
One party won for their study titled "beauty is in the eye of the beer holder." The team interviewed people in a bar and asked them to score how funny, attractive, and just generally awesome they thought they were. As the participants blood alcohol levels went up so did their scores, the BBC reported.
The study also found people would think they were more attractive even if they mistakenly believed they were drunk. Participants that were unknowingly given alcohol-free drinks had an increased opinion of themselves throughout the night.
Judges of the study also rated the attractiveness (in their own opinion) of each participant. The people who perceive themselves as the most attractive weren't necessarily rated that way by the judges.
"People have long observed that drunk people think others are more attractive but ours is the first study to find that drinking makes people think they are more attractive themselves," study co-author Brad Bushman of Ohio State University, told the BBC.
"If you become drunk and think you are really attractive it might influence your thoughts and behaviour towards others. It illustrates that in human memory, the link between alcohol and attractiveness is pretty strong," he said.
The winner of the Public Health prize went to a Thailand team that made recommendations on how to end an epidemic of women cutting off their husband penises in the 1980s. The technique was not advised if the penis had been "partially eaten by a duck," the BBC reported.
The president and state police of Belarus won the Peace Prize for outlawing public applause, and arresting a one armed man for breaking the rule.
Another prize went to a U.K. team that determined "that a cow is more likely to stand up the longer it has been lying down," the BBC reported.
Other prize winners answered questions such as: why do people cry when the cut onions? And could a person run across a pond if it was on the moon?
