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Summer 2010 | Vol 13 No 4

Mad science

Dr. Kwame McKenzie

I came across the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony more than a decade ago, and some of the research still makes me laugh. Every year, researchers are granted awards similar to the Nobel Prize, but with the aim of honouring research that makes you laugh, then think.

Now in their twentieth year, the awards, presented by the Annals of Improbable Research, have real Nobel Laureates among the judges.

From the start, experimental psychology has been well represented. In 1993, an Ig was presented to John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University for their conclusion that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space probably were. In 1994, Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore, won for his 30-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum or fed pigeons. In 1995, researchers from Keio University in Japan earned an Ig for training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and Monet.

After that sweep, psychology briefly fell out of favour until Justin Kruger and David Dunning won in 2000 for their landmark study, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

In 2004, Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University earned an Ig for their study of inattentional blindness. In that study, participants watched a short video in which two groups of people (wearing black or white t-shirts) passed around a basketball. Participants were given tasks, such as counting the number or types of passes made by the teams. Participants watched a number of short videos. In one video, a woman walks through the scene either carrying an umbrella or wearing a gorilla suit.

After they had seen the videos, participants were asked whether they had seen anything out of the ordinary. Surprisingly, 50 per cent did not report seeing the gorilla.

This was a classic Ig, because although it is funny, it makes us stop and think. The researchers stated that this finding shows we are wrong to think that important events will draw our attention away from everyday tasks. Perception is based on attention more than we think. This point is made repeatedly by people with lived experience of mental health and addiction issues, who claim that we as clinicians often miss what is important, although we complete our everyday tasks.

Visit the Ig Nobel website for more research to make you laugh – and think.

Kwame McKenzie, MD, MRCPSYCH (UK)
Executive Editor, CrossCurrents;
Senior Scientist, Social Equity and Health Research Section, CAMH;
Deputy Director, Schizophrenia Program, CAMH;
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto