This year's Ig Nobel Prizes — which are awarded for humorous, yet thought-provoking research — have been announced, but not on their home turf. For the first time in the ceremony's 35-year history, officials are holding the Ig Nobel ceremony outside of the United States — in Zurich, Switzerland. The reasons, they say, have to do with the increasingly hostile climate in the U.S. toward science and foreigners.
"Before last year, almost every winner would find a way to travel to the ceremony from around the world," says Marc Abrahams, who founded the Ig Nobels in 1991. "Last year, of the 10 winners, we ended up with only six of them at the ceremony." Four did not want to travel to the U.S., citing safety concerns related to unpredictable immigration and visa protocols. "They'd been seeing news reports of people being possibly sent right home when they arrived here, people being badgered about their personal lives in great detail, of people potentially being grabbed and put in prison or stuck on an airplane and sent to some other country, or who knows what else," explains Abrahams.
Abrahams says that, in part, he sees this change as an opportunity. "When you've been doing something for 35 years, what's the chance you're ever going to get to start it all over again afresh?" says Abrahams. Still, he and others involved say it's bittersweet to host the awards abroad.
"It's a sad decision to move from where it all started, but it's also opening new horizons for us and new audiences," says Kees Moeliker, retired director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam and a former Ig Nobel winner. "It's a very positive thing for all our fans we have in Europe." "Unfortunately, the decision that they're making to hold their ceremony outside the U.S. is quite rational," says Holden Thorp. He's the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals and doesn't play a role in the Ig Nobels.
Thorp says the move reflects a broader trend where international scientists are now less enthusiastic to come to the U.S. for study, work and awards. "A principle by which the United States built its scientific excellence," says Thorp, "which is that we welcome the best scientific talent from all over the world — that is no longer the case." After opting to host the Ig Nobel ceremony overseas, Abrahams has remained focused on the unwavering goal of the initiative — "to get people interested in things that otherwise they might never ever let themselves become interested in," he says. That includes fluid mechanics.
This year's physics prize was awarded to a research group that built the theory around — and then prototyped — a splash-free urinal. "I don't know if you've ever been in a urinal and wore sandals, you sometimes feel those droplets," says Tadd Truscott, a fluid dynamicist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and a member of the winning team. "They could be yours, they might be your neighbor's.
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