Book Examines Nose Picking and Buttered Toast

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=3459376

Book Examines Nose Picking and Buttered Toast
Wed September 17, 2003 08:08 AM ET
By Mark Egan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Why do teenagers pick their noses? Why does toast mostly fall buttered side down? Frivolous question perhaps, but to Marc Abrahams, this is serious work.

Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes. Like the Nobel Prizes, which laud the world's brightest minds for such things like writing top-notch literature or making the world a better place through scientific achievement, the Ig Nobels are awarded once a year. But there the similarities end.

Since 1991, Abrahams has been handing out Ig Nobels -- prizes awarded to people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."

Among the first winners was former Vice President Dan Quayle, who took the education award for, "demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education."

Among the gaffes that won the former vice president his Ig were: "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it" and, "Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite."

Now, after more than a decade of honoring triumphs of persistence over improbability, Abrahams has compiled a new book -- "The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research," in book stores Sept. 25.

To those new to Abrahams' work and to longtime fans, the book offers insight into some of the most bizarre research ever presented with a straight face.

Among the classic research recalled in the book is a scientific paper penned by three Scottish doctors entitled, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow." After three patients in the space of six months showed up in their emergency room with injuries sustained while sitting on toilets, the intrepid doctors decided to investigate.

TOILET HUMOR
"Excessive age of the toilets was implicated as a causative factor. As many toilets get older episodes of collapse may become more common, resulting in further injuries," the doctors wrote in their groundbreaking 1993 paper.

"We would therefore advise that the older porcelain familiar to so many of us should be treated with a certain degree of caution. An obvious way of using a toilet without fear of collapse is ... not to sit down, but to adopt a hovering stance," the paper offered by way of a solution.
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