Investigations into rats wearing pants, the personalities of rocks and the truthfulness of 1,000 liars won Ig Nobel prizes on Thursday night at Harvard, where Nobel-winning scientists gathered to honor the strangest research of the year. Those who traveled to Boston received their prizes from Nobel laureates: chemist Dudley Herschbach, economist Eric Maskin, Dr Rich Roberts and physicist Roy Glauber. Egyptian urologist Ahmed Shafik, for instance, wanted to know the toll that trousers might take on male rats. Rats that wore polyester showed “significantly lower” rates of sexual activity, Shafik found, perhaps because of the electrostatic charges created by the material. “There is little question that bullshit is a real and consequential phenomenon,” the scientists wrote, warning that given advances in communication, “bullshit may be more pervasive than ever before”.

Source: The Guardian September 22, 2016 23:01 UTC