Decide with a full bladder: Ig Nobel Prize for Professor Luk Warlop

The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991 by the academic journal Annals of Improbable Research. Since then, the awards have been at the core of a somewhat curious ritual celebrating the idea that science can be innovative and fun. Usually the prize goes to ‘real’, published scientific research that, according to the organisers, "first makes you laugh, and then makes you think." Typical examples of previous winning research: a training method to teach doves how to distinguish between a Picasso and a Monet; a bra that can quickly be transformed into two gas masks; a study on the speed of swimmers in water compared swimmers in syrup; a study on why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. And so on.

More than just for laughs

"Of course the Ig Nobel Prizes have a very high tongue-in-cheek level," said new Ig Nobel laureate Luk Warlop. "We’re talking about research that is sometimes too crazy to let loose, but usually the prizes meet their own criteria: they make you laugh, and they make you think. Sometimes what appears to be strange or trivial research at first sight turns out to have a profoundly practical purpose. For example, one winning research project studied the effect of Limburger (smelly) cheese on malaria mosquitoes. That sounds funny for a moment, but cheese-based mosquito-catching contraptions are widespread in Africa now. And there are some truly great scientific minds on list of past winners. Take Andre Geim, who won an Ig Nobel for the magnetic levitation of a frog, and then went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on graphene last year."

"I recently received news that I had won the prize for a study I published this year together with Mirjam Tuk (Universiteit Twente) and Debra Trampe (Rijskuniversiteit Groningen). Our research—published in Psychological Science, one of the better psychology journals—describes the effect of inhibition spill-over on decisions. Specifically (among other things), we found that participants who were asked to drink five glasses of water and thus had full bladders were able to make better financial decisions than subjects who had taken only a few sips. The people in the first group were more likely to opt for a deferred but higher reward than participants with an empty bladder."

“From this data, one can develop theories on the role of the inhibition centre in our brain that, when activated to control the bladder, will also exert a control effect on other behaviours such as making financial decisions. Such a theory obviously must be situated in the bigger picture, with a firm physiological and neurological basis, but it certainly contributes to a better understanding of how people make decisions. And that in turn has implications for marketing research, my normal field of study.”

Not a prize to flush down the toilet

"We got the 'prize for medicine’ although our work has little to do with it. We will be sharing the prize with a number of American and Australian researchers who examined the relationship between cognitive function and the sensation of an urgent need to urinate. For our part, I think we’ll keep to quite ordinary levels of 'restraint'."

"I am the second researcher at KU Leuven to win an Ig Nobel. The first was cardiologist Frans Van de Werf, who won the 'prize for literature’ in 1993 along with 976 co-authors, for their publication that had ‘a hundred times more authors than pages,’ said the award committee’s notation."

"What is it like to win a prize like this? It takes some getting used to, and it differs somewhat from other academic awards, but my feelings are mostly positive. Perhaps there are a few sourpusses out there who believe that science must always be a sombre and serious endeavour, but I think that's unhealthy."

"I will be accepting the award in person, yes. That's pretty exciting, right? You go to Harvard, where real Nobel Prize winners hand out the awards in a ceremony that is apparently quite picturesque. Until recently it was customary for the audience to throw paper airplanes at the winners, but they called that off ‘for security reasons’. There is also a lecture at MIT involved. I find it beautiful that the U.S. media and the international press lavish attention on the event. It is wonderful to get people talking about science and research, even if it is with a smile. It’s far better than letting research gather dust in the journal annals of the library. To me, the award is a form of good press and good public relations for science. No, an Ig Nobel is nothing to flush down the toilet."

http://improbable.com/ig/ 

Past winners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners