35th Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony features ten improbable scientists and three Nobel laureates from MIT
The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded by Improbable Research, a company dedicated to sharing research that makes people “LAUGH, then THINK”
Karie Shen–The Tech
Karie Shen–The Tech
Karie Shen–The Tech
Ever tried to make pasta sauce from scratch, and it clumps into grainy chunks beyond repair? Or maybe you’ve been out partying recently, and the increased blood alcohol content (BAC) has been tasting a bit like liquid Duolingo. This year, 10 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded to scientists or teams conducting cutting-edge research on these topics, among others — including how babies react to breastfeeding after mothers eat garlic, the rate of fingernail growth, and what happens when you tell narcissists that they are intelligent.
The Ig Nobel Prize is an annual prize awarded by Improbable Research, an international company and volunteer community dedicated to collecting and sharing research that makes people “LAUGH, then THINK.” Improbable even runs a magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. This year, the 35th ceremony was held at Boston University on Sept. 18, 2025, a change from previous years at MIT and Harvard University. Winners received a plaque and a signed letter from Nobel laureates.
The Literature Prize was awarded to the late Dr. William B. Bean and accepted by his son, Bennett Bean, for the former’s 35-year longitudinal study on fingernail growth. Bean, commenting on his father’s studies, stated, “One of the wonderful things about doing a long-term experiment on yourself is you never lose anybody to do it on. As long as you’re alive, you have a subject. And there are no legal complications either. It’s simple.” He joked, “You’re never sure about what you're going to be remembered for after you're dead.”
Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac won the Psychology Prize for investigating whether feelings of narcissism increase when people are told that they are intelligent, a term they call “Temporary State Narcissism.” Gignac and Zajenkowski quipped, “If you're special and you know it, clap your hands.”
The Nutrition Prize was awarded to Luca Luiselli and his team for discovering that rainbow lizards at a resort in Togo prefer four-cheese pizza over four-seasons pizza.
Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp won the Pediatrics Prize for studying the effects of eating garlic on breastfeeding babies. As it turns out, garlic makes the breastmilk smell stronger, leading to babies to stay attached for longer and drink more milk.
A team led by Katsutoshi Kino painted cows with zebra stripes and found that flies would bite less, winning them the Biology Prize.
The Chemistry Prize was awarded to Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich, and Frank Greenway for testing whether eating Teflon can increase feelings of fullness without the calories. “Civilization has zero calorie drinks, but we have not yet made the leap into the realm of zero calorie foods,” their study noted.
Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann won the Peace Prize for an investigation into what they term “Dutch Courage.” They found that while a low dose of alcohol did not change Germans’ self-ratings of their Dutch language skills, observers’ ratings of their pronunciation increased.
Another study on alcohol consumption earned a team led by Berry Pinshow the Aviation Prize this year. As his team discovered, alcohol is not appropriate for bats, as it can impair their abilities to fly and echolocate.
The Engineering Design Prize was awarded to Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal for analyzing how stinky shoes can negatively impact the experience of using a shoe rack.
Finally, the Physics Prize was awarded to a team from Europe for systematically testing the phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce — specifically finding at what point it begins to clump. (Tip: when starch concentration is below 1% relative to cheese mass, clumps form.)
The ceremony also featured a range of traditions interspersed with award presentations. Attendees were invited to bring scrap paper for making paper airplanes to throw at winners. Miss Sweetie Poo, a character typically played by an eight-year-old girl, screams, “Please stop: I’m bored” when speeches run over their allotted time. (This year, Gary Dryfoos, the Ig Nobel Ceremony’s Majordomo, served as an “older, larger substitute.”) Nobel laureates including MIT professors Esther Duflo, Moungi Bawendi, and Robert Merton PhD ’70, along with Harvard professors Eric Maskin and William Kaelin and Max Planck Institute scientist Svante Pääbo, presented the prizes to winners.
The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony also includes 24/7 Lectures, which feature 24 seconds of detailed scientific explanation of a topic followed by a seven-word slogan. In one such lecture, Trisha Pasricha, a physician-scientist at Harvard and the “Ask A Doctor” columnist for The Washington Post, articulated a study finding a 46% increased risk of hemorrhoids from using smartphones on the toilet, finishing her presentation with, “Smartphones are a pain in the ass” (7 words).
This year’s ceremony theme — which does not necessarily apply to the awards — was Digestion, with a cast of musicians, vocalists, physicians, students, and engineers debuting the mini-opera “Plight of the Gastroenterologist” in its honor.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, an event for members of the public to meet the prize winners, was held on Sept. 20 at the MIT Museum, with additional upcoming Face-to-Face events in London on Oct. 31, Berlin in November, and Tokyo in January 2026.