October 11, 2012 • 18 mins
In part two of their 2012 Ig Nobel Prize coverage, Robert and Julie take listeners through some of the more amazing winners at this year's awards ceremony. From monkey butts to exploding colonoscopies, first you'll laugh and then you'll think.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
This is part two of our pair of episodes about
the two thousand twelve Ignoble Prizes. In our last episode,
(00:24):
we told you what the Ignoble Prizes are and we
ran through a couple of the winners. We mentioned the
prize and food dynamics as well as the prize. And
what was the other one? Neuroscience? Neuroscience, Yes, there was
a dead salmon and and there's also some spilt coffee
in the other experiment. Just to rehatch really quickly, ignobed
Bele Prizes. He's happened every year, put on by the
(00:44):
Annals of Improbable Research. It is a celebration of the weird,
sometimes mundane, often hilarious, but ultimately useful scientific studies, real
scientific studies that happened every year. Uh and uh and
and why we should care about The aim is to
make you laugh and to make you think. And I
(01:06):
think they do both of these really well. Yes, So
this is the part B of the episode where and
this one we're just going to run through some of
the really cool winners from this year. And uh so,
if you haven't listened to the previous episode, it's not
required for this one. Um so you can. You can
listen to this one first and listen to the other one,
(01:26):
or take them in the order that God intended them.
But let's let's go ahead and launch into it. The
first of the prizes that were going to discuss today,
uh relates to monkeys behind. This is the twelve Anatomy Prize. Yep.
Franz Dawal, a biologist at Emory University, and Jennifer Pocarni,
(01:49):
a researcher at Emery, won this prize because, uh, they
showed that chimps can match the behind of other familiar
chimps to their faces. Um so, face to butt, right,
and the two were trying to determine whether chimpanzees can
interpret gender from appearance. So, first of all, why is
(02:09):
this study funny? I don't even think we really have
to say it. First of all, it involves monkeys. Anything
involving monkeys that doesn't also involving a vicious mauling attack
or or or a tragic death of some kind is
going to be hilarious just because monkeys are. You know,
we can't help it see ourselves in the ways monkeys
behave and monkeys do ridiculous and grotesque things. Uh. So
(02:32):
there's that level of it. And then it involves it
involves butts. Anytime a butt is involved in a scientific study,
we're all over. It's hilarious, The butt is funny. The
things that come out of butts are the are the stuff,
the the the ground floor of of comedy. And in
this study we have monkey butts, the double good scatology
(02:57):
humor in this let's get into the specifics. What they
did is they looked at six adult chimpanzees trained on
computerized matching to sample. Um, we're shown a sample behind
when and if you want to get some scientific about it,
you could say the ano genital region of a chimpanzee.
And then they were rewarded for selecting a corresponding facial image.
(03:20):
So it's like three thumbnails, one thumbnail of a monkey's button,
and then two thumbnails, each with a different monkey's face.
So I think, I mean, I think the actual paper
I was reading there's actually a comparison made to like Facebook.
So you had like monkey Facebook and then monkey butt book,
and then you have to to to piece the two together.
(03:40):
So we're studying they're studying this because obviously the way
that animals identify each other is of endless interest. We're
very interested in how we identify faces as humans, where
how other animals identify each other. Like in our previous
bat episode, we talked about how bats were able to
perceive other members of their species or peer group via
(04:01):
the sounds that they make. I mean, it's a vital
part of how we interact socially with the world around us,
So we're always interested in that. Monkeys, obviously there's a
lot of butt going on in any kind of monkey environment.
There's especially if you've ever been to the zoo, you
know baboon butts everywhere monkeys are are are naked creatures,
(04:23):
they're not wearing clothes. The butt is very much a
part of their social interaction, much in the same way
of the butt of the dog. It's a part of
this well like baboon's. I'm thinking too about um. Like
the estraus, for a baboon, you would be able to
tell whether or not a female was um was ready
for mating by looking at her butt. Um so of
(04:44):
course there's a culture. Yeah, yeah, um, of course. I
can't help but think of humans and think, you know,
if if another life form we're testing our recognition capabilities,
what would they test us on? You know, would they say, no,
we could pick one another out by hair? Well there,
(05:06):
I saw a study recently about that about hair. How
easily we recognize hair, particular hairstyles with an individual. And
in the study, they would take a celebrity with a
particular hairstyle like say, I don't know, like a uh,
just pick anyone like a John Ham. You know, it's
like like John Ham and his hair, and then another
celebrity with their sort of signature hair. And if they
put one celebrity's hair on the on the other head,
(05:30):
you know, digitally, not with a with a blade or anything.
No scalping involved. That for at least for a second,
you identify the person based purely on their hair. So
take John Ham's hair off, put it on I don't know,
Ron Howard, and at a first glance you'll be like, oh,
there's John hamm and they're like, oh no, it's it's
actually Ron Howard wearing John Ham's scalp A scene. It
always boils down to those most simple things, right, like
(05:52):
how our brain is just trained to go into pattern
recognition mode and create this fact simile of what we
look like or we think we look like to one another.
So with humans, we see, we see hair, we see face,
and we see things like glasses. We all have that
situation where someone who wears glasses suddenly isn't and we
don't recognize them, you know, the whole Superman Clark kn't think. Yeah,
(06:15):
it's true. You know, actually when I was little, I
remember when my dad would take off his glasses, I
would always be a little bit decentered because it wasn't like, hey,
you're not Dad anymore, you know, when you're very young
like that, it sort of occurs to you in that way.
But I do think that this is an interesting study,
and I do think it's uh. I mean, it is
about monkey butts, there's no getting around it, um and
(06:36):
the recognition, but it also says something about being with
people who are familiar to you in the ability to
pick out these different things about them and community to
write because they were talking about familiar faces to them
and familiar butts. Yeah, and they ultimately found that that
that they could they could they could pare a butt
(06:57):
with a face that they knew, but not a not
a face that they didn't know, you know, I mean,
it's not like it's not that interlinated with them. It's
not like some sort of magical butt sense that they have. Wow,
So a Facebook of butts really for the monkeys, So
it's like butt book, and then we could have hairbook
as well. I mean these are possibilities. Yeah. I mean.
(07:18):
The other hilarious thing about this is you can't help
but anthromomorphize the situation and you start thinking, well, what
if they did this with humans? And you're like, you
ask yourself, how many butts in the world could I
pair with with faces? And uh, you know I I
have a hard time answering that one. Well, I don't
think most people wouldn't be able to. Yeah, I think
(07:39):
maybe maybe one, but but it was you're in a
newdest colony. Well even then, you know, I mean, I
just don't think we have the butt sense unless there's
something particular about the butt, Like I could probably pick uh,
my friend oz Is butt out because I know that
he was. This is a great story of his that
I'm stealing here. He was shot with a flaming arrow
in the arm when he was a kid, because he
was apparently one of those kids the kind of good
(08:01):
shot in the arm of the flaming era. So they
had to take um some butt tissue off to patch
up his arm. So he has like some sort of
like he has a big notch out of butt from that.
Did he grow up in a big carning community? Um?
I think he was just kind of like a Tom
Sawyer upbringing. I guess, you know, Um, I thought perhaps
his parents were in the gym rost circus. I didn't know.
(08:23):
I just I think it was just kids running while
with flaming eras like they did back in the day, oh,
back in the day before helicopter parents. All right, so
let's move on to the next prize that we wanted
to discuss, the acoustics prize. Yes, this one is pretty great.
(08:43):
This one, Uh, it comes to us from a pair
of researchers in Japan, and they invented this device called
the speech camera, which the idea here is, and we've
all been in a situation somebody's talking and you really
don't want them to talk anymore, You would rather they
stopped talking, And this could be Yeah, the oscars, it's
like or you know they're up there. They just keep going.
(09:05):
When are they going to stop? Yeah? Yeah, what if
I could put a book push your button and make
them shut up? And that is what we have here
and it but but it's the way they went about
it is they they looked at how we speak, all right,
when when we're speaking, we're also listening. Words are coming
out of our mouth, and even though it's not really
(09:27):
happening on a conscious level, we're checking everything that's coming out.
We we have a q A department in our mind
that's making sure that the words coming out of our
mouth are saying what they need to say and sounding
the way they need to sound. And if that doesn't happen,
then it's I mean imagine it's it's like a conveyor
about at a at a factory. You're building something. You're
building your words and if they and if things start
(09:49):
coming out at the other end of that assembly line
wrong and incorrect, you're gonna shut down the whole line
and figure out what's wrong. And that's what happens when
when your speech, if some only things don't seem to
be coming out right, it shuts it down. Yeah, And
the speech jamra actually creates this shutting down process by
playing back the voice of the person who is speaking
(10:10):
at a really slight delay, and that does cause confusion
in the parts of the brain that are responsible for
hearing and processing, and then it causes the person to
either start stuttering or just stop talking altogether. And I
do think, as you were saying, it's it's uh, it's
incredibly Uh. It's just incredible how sensitive um our speech
(10:33):
and hearing abilities are. That just that's slight which just
shut everything. So it's not even like a full on
echo kind of a thing going on here. It's just
a slight tweak, just enough to make your q A
department in your brain shut down the line. Uh. Katsuit
Takakurajara and Colgi Toothka excuse me Soukata are the inventors
of this, and they said that this technology could also
(10:56):
be useful to ensure speakers in a meeting take turns
appropriately uh, and that when the person begins speak, you
just put this up. I'm just trying to imagine it
in corporate culture. Yeah, And I think that's one of
the great things too about it being uh. Some research
that came out of Japan, because uh, Japan has a
tendency you think of of the of Japanese culture is
(11:16):
very very polite and very esteemed and in in the
ritual of politeness, and out of that you can you
can sort of imagine a certain amount of passive aggressiveness
that that that aims at avoiding unpleasantly unpleasantries an awkwardness
in a social environment. So instead of having to actually say, look,
you need to be quiet. Now, you're talking too much
(11:38):
and you shouldn't be talking. Instead you can just push
a button and shut that down. Right, There's something wonderfully
passive aggressive about that and and perhaps to an extent
in a very broad sweeping way, distinctly Japanese. Yes it is.
This is a polite way of saying please stop. Um.
All right, So let's go on to the last prize
(12:02):
that we are going to talk about, the Medicine Prize,
and once again, but yes, the paper that was honored
here was titled Colonic gas explosion during therapeutic colonoscopy will Electrocotti,
which is exactly what it sounds like. It basically has
to deal with the fact that when you're performing colonoscopies.
(12:24):
When you're sending in the troops through the back door
to see what's going on in the rectal region, you're
basically I mean enough people out there. No, no, exactly
what I'm talking about here, you're you're We've done podcast
about some of the technology involved here. We're using cameras,
we're using devices to see what's going on in the
(12:46):
rectal area. We're sticking things up there, electric things, and
we're seeing what's going on. So there are some complications
that can occur, right, Like we're talking about, like what
happens if there's some residue in the colin right, there's
some some fecal residue and you have a laser that
you're using. Yes, you can cregular the explosion of colonic gases.
(13:09):
It's rare. It's admittedly it's rare, but when it happens,
it can understandably be u um uh rather shocking event
and and and harmful event. Um. You have to have
just the right amount of gases. They have to you
have to have the combustible gases hydrogen methane, which is
produced by the fermentation of non absorbable carbohydrates in the
(13:30):
colon by calonic bacteria. Uh, you have to have the
presence of combustive gas, oxygen and the application of a
heat source. So uh, this and this occurs due to
the machinery, if you will, that is being introduced to
the area, right, because think of it in this context.
You many times they're using lasers to cauterize polyps, right,
(13:54):
So if they go in there and they find polyps
and they're going to go ahead and take care of
those with a laser. So then, as you say, you're
introducing this element that could be combustible if you have
let's say, you know, a little release of methane and
hydrogen gases, electrocottery, You're cauterizing the wound in a colon
environment where there may be butt gas. And this I
(14:15):
hate to use the word perfect storm, but this could
be a perfect storm of of of conditions that could
lead to a colonic explosion. Now this you know these
as you say, this is rare, and these explosions have
happened in the patients have recovered. But if you are
undergoing this procedure, wouldn't you just feel so much better
to know that this person, this this Ben Emmanuel events
(14:36):
hasan worked on this and brought this problem to light
and said that we need proper surgery preparation. Yeah, so
they're talking about performing enemas, making sure that the working
environment is clear before you send in the troops to
to deal with the problem. So again, it's funny because
a it involves butts, It involves butt gas, it involves
(14:59):
foreign objects going into the butt. All three of these
things are again bedrock comedy. Uh. You know, you go
back to Canterbury Tales and you have tales of foreign
objects entering the rectum um. Well, but I'm also thinking
about that then diagram that we talked about in terms
of like what makes something funny because it has to
be in that zone where there's actually uh, there's no
(15:20):
harm that's going to be done, right, because we're preventing
harm here. Uh, And yet there's an implied threat of
a gastro intestinal explosion. Yes, so the gastro intestical explosion,
colonic explosion, but explosion, whatever you want to call it,
in and of itself funny plus very very important because
we're talking about preventing harm to patients who are undergoing
(15:43):
important procedures, and that's very serious. And and and key too.
I mean, this whole thing is key to what ignobles
are all about, finding studies that that are important but
also hilarious, but and also people who are toiling away
for hours and hours and no necessarily getting the recognition
that they need or deserve. So it is a nice
(16:05):
way to bring light to the subject. Like I have
a print out of the article here, and I don't
think like a like not worrying about like the medical
terminology in it. Like there's no way an eight year
old could get through this without dying of laughter, just
because there's you know, it's the whole thing is it's
about what it's about. It's about colon's and and and
gas building up there and things going into the rectum.
(16:27):
It's it's a minefield. Yeah. And I mean, you know,
this is a great wait to engage kids too, write.
I mean we always try to say, how can we
make science interesting to kids? Well, you know, for the
grotesque aspects here. So there's just so there's an extended
taste of what the two thousand and twelve ig Nobel
(16:47):
Prizes were all about. There were some other cool studies
they were not going to go into here. You should
definitely look up online people's hair changing colors because of
the water. Uh. Why a ponytail goes back and forth
and up and down when a person jogs. Yeah, there
was one related to Uh uh, it's like boring science
writing like wi is it like? It's very meta sounding. Oh,
(17:08):
it was a report on reports and the cost of
reports and assessing whether or not report another report should
be done. I believe that was the literature price for
the Probable. Yeah, so check those out if you were
at all into science or you're at all into into humor,
and definitely of those two interest crossover, and I feel
(17:29):
they do for most of the people listening to this podcast.
Go check out the Ignabole Prize winners for two thousand twelve.
You'll find those on the Improbable Research website. Just to
a search for that. I will also link to all
of this stuff in the blog post that accompanies these episodes.
In the meantime, if you would like to get in
touch with us, maybe share your thoughts on some of
these particular studies, some of the studies we didn't mention
(17:52):
or past winners. You can find us on Facebook and
you can find us on Tumbler. We are called Stuff
to blow your mind on both of those. Oh Twitter, However,
we go by the handle blow the Mind, and you
can always share your favorite ignoble awards with us by
emailing us up blow the Mind at discovery dot com
(18:17):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
It How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
This is part two of our pair of episodes about
the two thousand twelve Ignoble Prizes. In our last episode,
(00:24):
we told you what the Ignoble Prizes are and we
ran through a couple of the winners. We mentioned the
prize and food dynamics as well as the prize. And
what was the other one? Neuroscience? Neuroscience, Yes, there was
a dead salmon and and there's also some spilt coffee
in the other experiment. Just to rehatch really quickly, ignobed
Bele Prizes. He's happened every year, put on by the
(00:44):
Annals of Improbable Research. It is a celebration of the weird,
sometimes mundane, often hilarious, but ultimately useful scientific studies, real
scientific studies that happened every year. Uh and uh and
and why we should care about The aim is to
make you laugh and to make you think. And I
(01:06):
think they do both of these really well. Yes, So
this is the part B of the episode where and
this one we're just going to run through some of
the really cool winners from this year. And uh so,
if you haven't listened to the previous episode, it's not
required for this one. Um so you can. You can
listen to this one first and listen to the other one,
(01:26):
or take them in the order that God intended them.
But let's let's go ahead and launch into it. The
first of the prizes that were going to discuss today,
uh relates to monkeys behind. This is the twelve Anatomy Prize. Yep.
Franz Dawal, a biologist at Emory University, and Jennifer Pocarni,
(01:49):
a researcher at Emery, won this prize because, uh, they
showed that chimps can match the behind of other familiar
chimps to their faces. Um so, face to butt, right,
and the two were trying to determine whether chimpanzees can
interpret gender from appearance. So, first of all, why is
(02:09):
this study funny? I don't even think we really have
to say it. First of all, it involves monkeys. Anything
involving monkeys that doesn't also involving a vicious mauling attack
or or or a tragic death of some kind is
going to be hilarious just because monkeys are. You know,
we can't help it see ourselves in the ways monkeys
behave and monkeys do ridiculous and grotesque things. Uh. So
(02:32):
there's that level of it. And then it involves it
involves butts. Anytime a butt is involved in a scientific study,
we're all over. It's hilarious, The butt is funny. The
things that come out of butts are the are the stuff,
the the the ground floor of of comedy. And in
this study we have monkey butts, the double good scatology
(02:57):
humor in this let's get into the specifics. What they
did is they looked at six adult chimpanzees trained on
computerized matching to sample. Um, we're shown a sample behind
when and if you want to get some scientific about it,
you could say the ano genital region of a chimpanzee.
And then they were rewarded for selecting a corresponding facial image.
(03:20):
So it's like three thumbnails, one thumbnail of a monkey's button,
and then two thumbnails, each with a different monkey's face.
So I think, I mean, I think the actual paper
I was reading there's actually a comparison made to like Facebook.
So you had like monkey Facebook and then monkey butt book,
and then you have to to to piece the two together.
(03:40):
So we're studying they're studying this because obviously the way
that animals identify each other is of endless interest. We're
very interested in how we identify faces as humans, where
how other animals identify each other. Like in our previous
bat episode, we talked about how bats were able to
perceive other members of their species or peer group via
(04:01):
the sounds that they make. I mean, it's a vital
part of how we interact socially with the world around us,
So we're always interested in that. Monkeys, obviously there's a
lot of butt going on in any kind of monkey environment.
There's especially if you've ever been to the zoo, you
know baboon butts everywhere monkeys are are are naked creatures,
(04:23):
they're not wearing clothes. The butt is very much a
part of their social interaction, much in the same way
of the butt of the dog. It's a part of
this well like baboon's. I'm thinking too about um. Like
the estraus, for a baboon, you would be able to
tell whether or not a female was um was ready
for mating by looking at her butt. Um so of
(04:44):
course there's a culture. Yeah, yeah, um, of course. I
can't help but think of humans and think, you know,
if if another life form we're testing our recognition capabilities,
what would they test us on? You know, would they say, no,
we could pick one another out by hair? Well there,
(05:06):
I saw a study recently about that about hair. How
easily we recognize hair, particular hairstyles with an individual. And
in the study, they would take a celebrity with a
particular hairstyle like say, I don't know, like a uh,
just pick anyone like a John Ham. You know, it's
like like John Ham and his hair, and then another
celebrity with their sort of signature hair. And if they
put one celebrity's hair on the on the other head,
(05:30):
you know, digitally, not with a with a blade or anything.
No scalping involved. That for at least for a second,
you identify the person based purely on their hair. So
take John Ham's hair off, put it on I don't know,
Ron Howard, and at a first glance you'll be like, oh,
there's John hamm and they're like, oh no, it's it's
actually Ron Howard wearing John Ham's scalp A scene. It
always boils down to those most simple things, right, like
(05:52):
how our brain is just trained to go into pattern
recognition mode and create this fact simile of what we
look like or we think we look like to one another.
So with humans, we see, we see hair, we see face,
and we see things like glasses. We all have that
situation where someone who wears glasses suddenly isn't and we
don't recognize them, you know, the whole Superman Clark kn't think. Yeah,
(06:15):
it's true. You know, actually when I was little, I
remember when my dad would take off his glasses, I
would always be a little bit decentered because it wasn't like, hey,
you're not Dad anymore, you know, when you're very young
like that, it sort of occurs to you in that way.
But I do think that this is an interesting study,
and I do think it's uh. I mean, it is
about monkey butts, there's no getting around it, um and
(06:36):
the recognition, but it also says something about being with
people who are familiar to you in the ability to
pick out these different things about them and community to
write because they were talking about familiar faces to them
and familiar butts. Yeah, and they ultimately found that that
that they could they could they could pare a butt
(06:57):
with a face that they knew, but not a not
a face that they didn't know, you know, I mean,
it's not like it's not that interlinated with them. It's
not like some sort of magical butt sense that they have. Wow,
So a Facebook of butts really for the monkeys, So
it's like butt book, and then we could have hairbook
as well. I mean these are possibilities. Yeah. I mean.
(07:18):
The other hilarious thing about this is you can't help
but anthromomorphize the situation and you start thinking, well, what
if they did this with humans? And you're like, you
ask yourself, how many butts in the world could I
pair with with faces? And uh, you know I I
have a hard time answering that one. Well, I don't
think most people wouldn't be able to. Yeah, I think
(07:39):
maybe maybe one, but but it was you're in a
newdest colony. Well even then, you know, I mean, I
just don't think we have the butt sense unless there's
something particular about the butt, Like I could probably pick uh,
my friend oz Is butt out because I know that
he was. This is a great story of his that
I'm stealing here. He was shot with a flaming arrow
in the arm when he was a kid, because he
was apparently one of those kids the kind of good
(08:01):
shot in the arm of the flaming era. So they
had to take um some butt tissue off to patch
up his arm. So he has like some sort of
like he has a big notch out of butt from that.
Did he grow up in a big carning community? Um?
I think he was just kind of like a Tom
Sawyer upbringing. I guess, you know, Um, I thought perhaps
his parents were in the gym rost circus. I didn't know.
(08:23):
I just I think it was just kids running while
with flaming eras like they did back in the day, oh,
back in the day before helicopter parents. All right, so
let's move on to the next prize that we wanted
to discuss, the acoustics prize. Yes, this one is pretty great.
(08:43):
This one, Uh, it comes to us from a pair
of researchers in Japan, and they invented this device called
the speech camera, which the idea here is, and we've
all been in a situation somebody's talking and you really
don't want them to talk anymore, You would rather they
stopped talking, And this could be Yeah, the oscars, it's
like or you know they're up there. They just keep going.
(09:05):
When are they going to stop? Yeah? Yeah, what if
I could put a book push your button and make
them shut up? And that is what we have here
and it but but it's the way they went about
it is they they looked at how we speak, all right,
when when we're speaking, we're also listening. Words are coming
out of our mouth, and even though it's not really
(09:27):
happening on a conscious level, we're checking everything that's coming out.
We we have a q A department in our mind
that's making sure that the words coming out of our
mouth are saying what they need to say and sounding
the way they need to sound. And if that doesn't happen,
then it's I mean imagine it's it's like a conveyor
about at a at a factory. You're building something. You're
building your words and if they and if things start
(09:49):
coming out at the other end of that assembly line
wrong and incorrect, you're gonna shut down the whole line
and figure out what's wrong. And that's what happens when
when your speech, if some only things don't seem to
be coming out right, it shuts it down. Yeah, And
the speech jamra actually creates this shutting down process by
playing back the voice of the person who is speaking
(10:10):
at a really slight delay, and that does cause confusion
in the parts of the brain that are responsible for
hearing and processing, and then it causes the person to
either start stuttering or just stop talking altogether. And I
do think, as you were saying, it's it's uh, it's
incredibly Uh. It's just incredible how sensitive um our speech
(10:33):
and hearing abilities are. That just that's slight which just
shut everything. So it's not even like a full on
echo kind of a thing going on here. It's just
a slight tweak, just enough to make your q A
department in your brain shut down the line. Uh. Katsuit
Takakurajara and Colgi Toothka excuse me Soukata are the inventors
of this, and they said that this technology could also
(10:56):
be useful to ensure speakers in a meeting take turns
appropriately uh, and that when the person begins speak, you
just put this up. I'm just trying to imagine it
in corporate culture. Yeah, And I think that's one of
the great things too about it being uh. Some research
that came out of Japan, because uh, Japan has a
tendency you think of of the of Japanese culture is
(11:16):
very very polite and very esteemed and in in the
ritual of politeness, and out of that you can you
can sort of imagine a certain amount of passive aggressiveness
that that that aims at avoiding unpleasantly unpleasantries an awkwardness
in a social environment. So instead of having to actually say, look,
you need to be quiet. Now, you're talking too much
(11:38):
and you shouldn't be talking. Instead you can just push
a button and shut that down. Right, There's something wonderfully
passive aggressive about that and and perhaps to an extent
in a very broad sweeping way, distinctly Japanese. Yes it is.
This is a polite way of saying please stop. Um.
All right, So let's go on to the last prize
(12:02):
that we are going to talk about, the Medicine Prize,
and once again, but yes, the paper that was honored
here was titled Colonic gas explosion during therapeutic colonoscopy will Electrocotti,
which is exactly what it sounds like. It basically has
to deal with the fact that when you're performing colonoscopies.
(12:24):
When you're sending in the troops through the back door
to see what's going on in the rectal region, you're
basically I mean enough people out there. No, no, exactly
what I'm talking about here, you're you're We've done podcast
about some of the technology involved here. We're using cameras,
we're using devices to see what's going on in the
(12:46):
rectal area. We're sticking things up there, electric things, and
we're seeing what's going on. So there are some complications
that can occur, right, Like we're talking about, like what
happens if there's some residue in the colin right, there's
some some fecal residue and you have a laser that
you're using. Yes, you can cregular the explosion of colonic gases.
(13:09):
It's rare. It's admittedly it's rare, but when it happens,
it can understandably be u um uh rather shocking event
and and and harmful event. Um. You have to have
just the right amount of gases. They have to you
have to have the combustible gases hydrogen methane, which is
produced by the fermentation of non absorbable carbohydrates in the
(13:30):
colon by calonic bacteria. Uh, you have to have the
presence of combustive gas, oxygen and the application of a
heat source. So uh, this and this occurs due to
the machinery, if you will, that is being introduced to
the area, right, because think of it in this context.
You many times they're using lasers to cauterize polyps, right,
(13:54):
So if they go in there and they find polyps
and they're going to go ahead and take care of
those with a laser. So then, as you say, you're
introducing this element that could be combustible if you have
let's say, you know, a little release of methane and
hydrogen gases, electrocottery, You're cauterizing the wound in a colon
environment where there may be butt gas. And this I
(14:15):
hate to use the word perfect storm, but this could
be a perfect storm of of of conditions that could
lead to a colonic explosion. Now this you know these
as you say, this is rare, and these explosions have
happened in the patients have recovered. But if you are
undergoing this procedure, wouldn't you just feel so much better
to know that this person, this this Ben Emmanuel events
(14:36):
hasan worked on this and brought this problem to light
and said that we need proper surgery preparation. Yeah, so
they're talking about performing enemas, making sure that the working
environment is clear before you send in the troops to
to deal with the problem. So again, it's funny because
a it involves butts, It involves butt gas, it involves
(14:59):
foreign objects going into the butt. All three of these
things are again bedrock comedy. Uh. You know, you go
back to Canterbury Tales and you have tales of foreign
objects entering the rectum um. Well, but I'm also thinking
about that then diagram that we talked about in terms
of like what makes something funny because it has to
be in that zone where there's actually uh, there's no
(15:20):
harm that's going to be done, right, because we're preventing
harm here. Uh, And yet there's an implied threat of
a gastro intestinal explosion. Yes, so the gastro intestical explosion,
colonic explosion, but explosion, whatever you want to call it,
in and of itself funny plus very very important because
we're talking about preventing harm to patients who are undergoing
(15:43):
important procedures, and that's very serious. And and and key too.
I mean, this whole thing is key to what ignobles
are all about, finding studies that that are important but
also hilarious, but and also people who are toiling away
for hours and hours and no necessarily getting the recognition
that they need or deserve. So it is a nice
(16:05):
way to bring light to the subject. Like I have
a print out of the article here, and I don't
think like a like not worrying about like the medical
terminology in it. Like there's no way an eight year
old could get through this without dying of laughter, just
because there's you know, it's the whole thing is it's
about what it's about. It's about colon's and and and
gas building up there and things going into the rectum.
(16:27):
It's it's a minefield. Yeah. And I mean, you know,
this is a great wait to engage kids too, write.
I mean we always try to say, how can we
make science interesting to kids? Well, you know, for the
grotesque aspects here. So there's just so there's an extended
taste of what the two thousand and twelve ig Nobel
(16:47):
Prizes were all about. There were some other cool studies
they were not going to go into here. You should
definitely look up online people's hair changing colors because of
the water. Uh. Why a ponytail goes back and forth
and up and down when a person jogs. Yeah, there
was one related to Uh uh, it's like boring science
writing like wi is it like? It's very meta sounding. Oh,
(17:08):
it was a report on reports and the cost of
reports and assessing whether or not report another report should
be done. I believe that was the literature price for
the Probable. Yeah, so check those out if you were
at all into science or you're at all into into humor,
and definitely of those two interest crossover, and I feel
(17:29):
they do for most of the people listening to this podcast.
Go check out the Ignabole Prize winners for two thousand twelve.
You'll find those on the Improbable Research website. Just to
a search for that. I will also link to all
of this stuff in the blog post that accompanies these episodes.
In the meantime, if you would like to get in
touch with us, maybe share your thoughts on some of
these particular studies, some of the studies we didn't mention
(17:52):
or past winners. You can find us on Facebook and
you can find us on Tumbler. We are called Stuff
to blow your mind on both of those. Oh Twitter, However,
we go by the handle blow the Mind, and you
can always share your favorite ignoble awards with us by
emailing us up blow the Mind at discovery dot com
(18:17):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
It How Stuff Works dot com
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