I think it's important to remember that the Ig Nobel prizes aren't just about the science being weird - it's about the weird science that actually is useful if you think about it.
I feel it was originally meant as a Darwin Award or Razzie equivalent to the Nobel Prize. But each year I review the prizes I find more and more value to the research.
@@korbindallas4552 I'm young enough that the "For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK " description (or similar phrasing) has been around for the entire time that I was aware of the Ig Nobels, but that could well be a later tag for them.
@@travcollier questions are only “silly” if you don’t understand the questioning. Why did Newton asking about an apple falling despite him knowing full well that he’s seen things fall off tables, buildings, and even at construction sites, he’s always known everything falls, but he gave new inspiration to the question by trying to figure out what was actually causing the “phenomena” to happen.
My great-grandmother used to routinely look up randomly, she'd wait for others to join her and when a sizeable crowd had gathered she'd walk off. It was one of her favourite pranks, staring at nothing and tricking others to do the same.
I have no idea who your great-grandmother is, where she was from or anything else, but I like her. I bet she was a great person to hang out with. The kind of person who can make you laugh so much, your stomach and the sides of your mouth hurt from laughing so much 😂
Especially considering that whenever I've been in a pillow fight with other men, it was all out warfare trying to knock each other into a different dimension.
Yeah, girls are definitely gentler when it comes to pillow fights but occasionally I have been in a pillow fight with other women where a deep primal rage is unleashed and not a single person escapes unscathed from that.
I love that "stopping to look" study. The idea of a researcher going out and staring intently at nothing just to bait other people into doing the same thing is hilarious
Not a researcher, but a friend of mine moved to the UK & LOVES doing a version of this, she calls it "the queueing game" & has found it only takes her & 1 friend to stand one behind the other & others will come & join the queue, cause people there love to queue lol. I am curious which country the staring research occured in (and some of the others too), cause I do think country would make a difference to the results
I remember one a long time back where the researcher stood in an elevator facing the back. The general response is people entering the elevator looking confused or uncomfortable and also standing facing the back. People just assume that if you're looking at something, they want to see what's so interesting.
I remember one time in first grade when I was bored + didn't want to have math lessons. I convinced a bunch of other students that there was an ominous looking stranger outside under the trees at the far end of the playground. I think I even convinced myself. 😈 Heh heh. You lost your illusion of control over your class for a bit, didn't you, Miss Stuart?
4:36 Im 30 and live across the street from my middle and elementary school. I still panic if I hear the school bell thinking I'm late for class. The clicker really does work.
I had a science teacher in middle school who wouldn't allow us to start preparing to leave class until the bell rang... he would start talking about Pavlov and his dogs, even after the bell, and we couldn't get up until he finished. This was seen as being unnecessarily obtuse as failure to reach your next class in the three minutes we were allotted was pretty much an instant detention.
@@moosemaimeri think it did us well to not make extra time for people to waste in the halls. Of course, there were students who had close-by classes who would clog the halls, but it wouldn't have helped anyone to teach kids that "someone else caused me to be late" was a valid excuse in life.
@@moosemaimer The thing about conditioning like that is it's easy to break once you're aware it's happening and the association is in the front of your mind. Spite and defiance aren't "pretty," but they're very useful tools for humans that need to reprogram themselves.
@@MDuarte-vp7bmthere’s a reason people stay alive out of spite- it works. It’s not pleasant, generally, but you get a lot of older folks who have stayed alive simply to stick it out and be grumpy til the very end xD
@@Fr00ter Maybe that the hosts are just acting as they believe is expected by the audience. I just like the energy that Tom Kum is portraying. Very similar to the young lady who has left Sci Show.
Unfortunately I think he's only a temporary host; he's also one of the cohosts of the podcast "Let's Learn Everything" and he was described as a "guest host" for SciShow. I could be wrong though, and I like him a lot so I hope he sticks around for a while
That last one - what a lost opportunity. In my teens (50+ years ago), friends and I thought it was hilarious to stage a "look up", and see how many uplookers we could catch, before quietly slipping away one by one. If only I had kept notes, that ig-noble could have been mine.
10:10 I know it's accidental, but this moment looked hilariously savage. The guy on the right looks like he goes in for a kiss at the exact same time the guy on the left looks down at his phone.
I just now realized I clicked on this video without even reading the title I just seen sci show and knew it would be interesting so its up next to watch
The Clickers show the importance of good quality feedback. Shoutout to my old manager who complained in front of me about an anonymous complaint of how we never got any feedback from them. (It was my complaint.)
The clicker probably enhances memory by adding an additional sensory association with success, even without a treat. More connections equals stronger memory.
There was a study using clickers on humans which used kids taking ballet. You're not supposed to look down at your feet when you go into the various positions, but that can make it hard for beginners to know when they've got it right. This paired up the students, having the one with the clicker watch the other's feet and click when they got the position right. Then they'd swap. It worked really well! It gave immediate feedback, telling them the *moment* they got it correctly, allowing them to learn how it felt without having to ruin their posture by looking down, directly at their feet or into a mirror. And the click is much more precise than saying "That's it!" or "Excellent!"
On #10. When my dad was younger, in the 1940's, he and some friends would walk in downtown San Antonio. One would stop and stare up then another would until they had amassed a huge crowd. Then they would step back and watch the people trying to figure out what was up there. Ah, the fun kids had before smart phones and the internet.
Looking up reminds me of the old commuter trick. Whenever I went through Grand Central Station when it was crowded I would look up in order to convince the people I was walking towards I didn't see them that way they would get out of my way rather than me having to get out of theirs.
The little rascals proved this theory 90 yrs ago. A guy has a doctor put a bandage on his neck while the guy's head is tilted back and the doctor tells him to keep his head in that position. He goes outside to wait for a taxi and draws a crowd looking up that allows the Little Rascals to sneak into a movie theater. Ah, delinquency.
@@NotSoMuchFranklyIt works with phones, too. Walking while staring down at phone will have others go around. Inevitably, someone else will do the same and you will get food or drink spilled on you. It's the walking version of not waiting your turn at a stop sign. It's fine until it's not.
I heard recently that a long-standing decongestant drug was found upon systematic review to not actually be effective. I wondered if the congestion study was testing against that one - looked it up and turns out they used a different kind.
Yeah, phenylephrine is already known to be ineffective since the beginning. Now the only currently known working oral decongestant is pseudoephedrine. Which sucks because it's extremely hard to obtain those.
When you selected the avocados as stand - ins for testicles, were you aware that the Nahuatl word “ahuacatl” means “testicle” and that from there we get our word for the tasty fruit😂🥑😂🥑😂🥑
On the orgasm effects to decongest your sinuses, I used to work in the horse industry. At the breeding shed, the stallion’s nose will often run while breeding. 😮
Those are some top-tier segues, Tom exclamation point lol, from listening to Let's Learn Everything!, I can be pretty confident when I say that you wrote a good portion of the script.
@@faceoctopus4571 I wonder when they'll develop treatment for phantom pain in parts we can't usually see? I had root canal work over 15 years ago and I still have sensitivity in that tooth. There is literally no nerve in it to feel pain any more!
Hair as protection from impacts and abrasions is an old (and still pretty good) theory. Though the "fighting" part is a speculative stretch IMO... Guys run into stuff and fall down plenty ;) On the clicker training... You can literally train yourself using that sort of basic reinforcement training! Seriously, you're basically using the our conscious mind to condition/train your subconscious mind. We are animals after all.
Meeting your partner on a blind date for a research project with eye trackers and heart rate monitors attached would be the most incredible how we met story.
V.S Ramachandran had successfully used a mirror reflecting the intact arm of an amputee to suppress pain felt in the phantom limb. Also, the click method was found to improve training of surgeons as this reflects a pass/fail binary, where's commentary from the instructor can carry the baggage of the instructor's (often negative) biases. The click has been applied to more training regimens since.
I was looking through comments to see if anyone else mentioned them using mirrors to help treat phantom pain for amputees. I always find that effect fascinating.
i love to play with the idea irl behind the last nobel prize “ones a crowd”, and regularly look intently at nothing just for someone to also look and be either concerned or disappointed
That last one reminds me of that chimp experiment: A goup of chimps is hanging around. There is a ladder with a treat waiting at the top. However, if they were to try to climb the lader past a certain point, the entire group would be hosed down with water. I don't remember if the treat was snatched away or if they at least got to keep that. This is done until all chimps have learned to keep of the ladder. Then a chimp is switched for a different one who doesn't know about the danger if the ladder. He will try to climb the ladder but the other chimps will prevent him, by beating him up. New chimps will be rotated in one at a time until all the chimps that witnessed the punishment will be gone. None of the chimps in there at the end ever experienced the actual punishment for trying to get the treat. They just experienced the punishment by by the other chimps and maybe whatever they communicated to them. I wonder what would happen in the staring up experiment if once a large enough crowd formed, the original person just left. How long would people stay standing there until they realize they have no good reason to stand there?
There was an interesting study on animals in the neutral zone along the soviet border, even decades after the wall/fence was removed, the animals still wouldn't cross that line
@mehere8038 they probably wouldn't cross it because that specific border was in some way natural(e.g. a river, or mountain range). Usually, areas made uninhabitable by humans are areas where animals thrive(like chernobyl). Human militarized borders are usually only on paper, or only by threat. Physical barriers are expensive, and the USSR did not have them. Nobody that big did.
@@MDuarte-vp7bm ever heard of the Berlin wall? Well that barrier wasn't limited to Berlin, it covered the entire border & was called the "iron curtain". It is now called the "European green belt" & follows that former fence. Animals will go to the former fence line in the middle of an open field, but refuse to cross the former fenceline. & a patrolled fence is hardly expensive compared to a space program! Of course there was a physical barrier there! Geez it amazes me what people say
@@MDuarte-vp7bm trying again ever heard of the Berlin wall? Well that barrier wasn't limited to Berlin, it covered the entire border & was called the "iron curtain". It is now called the "European green belt" & follows that former fence. Animals will go to the former fence line in the middle of an open field, but refuse to cross the former fenceline.
@@rainydaylady6596i think it's a super dry word joke, or he was trying to describe how he always has one nose hair that bothers him(probably by sticking out of his nose and making him sneeze).
In terms of behavior, humans are still the weirdest. We're the only species that deliberately seeks experiences of fear (thrill rides, horror stories, etc) and pain (spicy peppers, athletics, tattoos, etc). Apparently it works as a defense against traumatization from actually bad experiences.
My absolute favorite Ig Nobel is “placebos that cause side affects are more effective than placebos that do NOT cause side affects.” What this tells us is that it is entirely possible that current medication that causes side affects may not actually be effective and only perceived as effective. Think about it!!!
It doesn't really tell you that, because most medications go through studies with placebo controls before getting approved, so we would know about it if they weren't any more effective than a placebo.
This is how I feel about most cold medicines. I don't generally believe they do anything, and when I take them for a cold, my belief is generally reinforced.
@@TheRealTimMeredith you misunderstood his supposition. He was saying that some side effects are welcome or distracting enough to reduce the perception of the symptoms. Or perhaps that we are more willing to trust a medication is working if there are distracting side effects. I think one example of this is phenylephrine compared to pseudoephedrine. Phenylephrine is a measurable effective decongestant... that doesn't work. Some combination of side effects is causing pseudoephedrine to functionally reduce the perception of symptoms, even if phenylephrine is "just as effective."
This honestly was a great episode, id love to hear more of the ig nobel prizes now, as the wierd and random things are still valuable to research. like that synchronized heart rates one was super interesting to hear about.
Especially at a time when so many people groom their eyebrows. And if it’s so easy to recognise a narcissist, why do so many people still fall for them? Also, I don’t see anything special about Donald Trump’s eyebrows, and he’s one of the worst narcissists ever. It’s his smirk that gives it away.
That's because it is. This is the kind of thing that gets touted around in books from the 1920s. It's absolutely shameful and disgustiong for SCISHOW to be spreading it in 2024.
@@twinsgardening896 yep. I was trying to be gentle about it, but it’s just straight up bigotry. I’m guessing someone decided to do the study because of the same cultural trends like “face reading” on TikTok. Which is again, just phrenology, sexism, classism, and racism
@@twinsgardening896 I know all about phrenology, thankyou. May I suggest you look into irony, sarcasm and humour. In the meantime keep your very odd selective outrage to yourself rather than overreacting to posts that are obviously meant in jest.
Good eye, I totally missed the meta-illustration there. However, bc you lured me in for a close look, it seems to me that the nurses sleeve is sewing themed. So, what you/we initially assumed was an image of a coronavirus is in fact one of those tomato pin cushions. Am i wrong?
Excellent job Tom! I've been a fan of yours for a while and its great to see you join Sci Show! You fit in perfect! For the 7th one, I wonder if they had any participants with a vericocele? Its like a vericose vein in your testicle that about 15% of men have that is most typically on the left that would also increase left testicular temperature!
Emma Dauster, the writer on this episode, must have made it a personal challenge to segue absolutely every story into the next one. Kudos! Also, the last story about looking up being contagious doesn't surprise me in the least. We're wired to be both social creatures and also hyper aware of threats in our environment. Seeing another of your species looking at something for an extended period makes it evolutionarily beneficial that you check it out too. Might be danger; might be a tasty snack. My pets do this too. If one checks out something new, it's not long before the others want to know what's up as well.
Even if these vids don’t get that many views or interactions, as long as you had fun making them, I see that as a win. Also, I enjoyed them. So thanks for making this lmao
Remember the movie "Liar, Liar" if you've watched it. But Jim Carrie's character was asked "Hows it hanging" and he responded "Short, stubby, and always to the left." Always to the left, huh? The short and stubby part can be their own thing for the movie's humor, however, I took note of the always to the left part. That movie started my research decades ago, for long enough for me to notice that it's in fact hanging to the left. I grew up, and let that go, though here I am watching SciShow talk about an Ignoble that answered my question thag I would never ask. I'm a lefty, so I thought that may have has something to do with it, and that's not a joke about what hand I use, I just thought if you're left handed than your doodle is going to hang on the left. All this because of a movie I saw, and the question I never asked.
Well, someone has to ask these questions! I'm proud of these people on the cutting edge. I wonder how much serious and important science we would miss out on if scientists were hung up on taboos or modesty.
The left testicle is warmer than the right, the left breast is larger than the right, I wonder what causes the left/right imbalance of paired organs? I know the right lung is generally larger than the left since the heart generally occupies some of the same space that the left lung would occupy, I wonder if the heart’s positioning in the body also contributes to those other effects. Or perhaps it’s something that can vary from person to person, like handedness?
As a scientist, winning an Ig Nobel Prize is bigger life goal to me than the actual Nobel Prize. To be fair, I work in a field that doesn't have a corresponding Nobel Prize category and *does* have a category in the Ig Nobel Prizes, but still. I would never intentionally set out to win an Ig Nobel Prize, but if I end up doing research that someone thinks is deserving of one, that would be just fantastic. A fun fact that I love about the Ig Nobels is that to this day there has only been one person to win both an Ig Nobel Prize and an actual Nobel Prize. Sir Andre Geim won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for using magnets to levitate a frog and then won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for his discovery of and work on graphene. He has stated that he values both prizes equally.
You're forgetting my personal favorite, and the favorite of everyone whose parents ever yelled at them for cracking their knuckles. It was 2009 or 2010, a man spent 50 years cracking the knuckles of only one hand to prove that cracking your knuckles does not, in fact, cause arthritis
I think it's important to remember that the Ig Nobel prizes aren't just about the science being weird - it's about the weird science that actually is useful if you think about it.
I feel it was originally meant as a Darwin Award or Razzie equivalent to the Nobel Prize. But each year I review the prizes I find more and more value to the research.
@@korbindallas4552 I'm young enough that the "For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK " description (or similar phrasing) has been around for the entire time that I was aware of the Ig Nobels, but that could well be a later tag for them.
@@1One2Three5Eight13That has always been the description of the Ig Nobels, as a fan of them from the beginning.
Maybe not "useful", but at least interesting and done rigorously. Serious answers to silly questions have long been part of them ;)
@@travcollier questions are only “silly” if you don’t understand the questioning. Why did Newton asking about an apple falling despite him knowing full well that he’s seen things fall off tables, buildings, and even at construction sites, he’s always known everything falls, but he gave new inspiration to the question by trying to figure out what was actually causing the “phenomena” to happen.
My great-grandmother used to routinely look up randomly, she'd wait for others to join her and when a sizeable crowd had gathered she'd walk off. It was one of her favourite pranks, staring at nothing and tricking others to do the same.
We used to do this at Great Adventure (Six Flags) in high school. It's so satisfying and silly.
I have no idea who your great-grandmother is, where she was from or anything else, but I like her. I bet she was a great person to hang out with. The kind of person who can make you laugh so much, your stomach and the sides of your mouth hurt from laughing so much 😂
My cats do that to me all the time.
The stock footage for men fighting being a pillow fight is so delightfully wholesome
I was just about to comment that lol. It does look super wholesome.
I feel programmed to think men fighting is wholesome
Especially considering that whenever I've been in a pillow fight with other men, it was all out warfare trying to knock each other into a different dimension.
@@deawinter super hot
Yeah, girls are definitely gentler when it comes to pillow fights but occasionally I have been in a pillow fight with other women where a deep primal rage is unleashed and not a single person escapes unscathed from that.
Pillow talk: “Hey Babe, would you say your nose is a) very stuffy, b) slightly stuffy, or c) not stuffy?”
I'm stuffy occasionally. But not my nose.
🤣😂🤣🖖
"On a scale of 1 to 10, how stuffy would you say you are?"
@@firelunamoon 3 but when I'm 3 I'm 100%
*with a single rose in my teeth* How are those 100 left nostrils feeling tonight?
I love that "stopping to look" study. The idea of a researcher going out and staring intently at nothing just to bait other people into doing the same thing is hilarious
Not a researcher, but a friend of mine moved to the UK & LOVES doing a version of this, she calls it "the queueing game" & has found it only takes her & 1 friend to stand one behind the other & others will come & join the queue, cause people there love to queue lol. I am curious which country the staring research occured in (and some of the others too), cause I do think country would make a difference to the results
I remember one a long time back where the researcher stood in an elevator facing the back. The general response is people entering the elevator looking confused or uncomfortable and also standing facing the back. People just assume that if you're looking at something, they want to see what's so interesting.
I remember one time in first grade when I was bored + didn't want to have math lessons. I convinced a bunch of other students that there was an ominous looking stranger outside under the trees at the far end of the playground. I think I even convinced myself.
😈 Heh heh. You lost your illusion of control over your class for a bit, didn't you, Miss Stuart?
@@mehere8038 "...'cause people there love to queue."
"I'm British. I know how to queue." Arthur Dent
4:36
Im 30 and live across the street from my middle and elementary school. I still panic if I hear the school bell thinking I'm late for class. The clicker really does work.
I had a science teacher in middle school who wouldn't allow us to start preparing to leave class until the bell rang... he would start talking about Pavlov and his dogs, even after the bell, and we couldn't get up until he finished.
This was seen as being unnecessarily obtuse as failure to reach your next class in the three minutes we were allotted was pretty much an instant detention.
@@moosemaimeri think it did us well to not make extra time for people to waste in the halls. Of course, there were students who had close-by classes who would clog the halls, but it wouldn't have helped anyone to teach kids that "someone else caused me to be late" was a valid excuse in life.
@@moosemaimer The thing about conditioning like that is it's easy to break once you're aware it's happening and the association is in the front of your mind. Spite and defiance aren't "pretty," but they're very useful tools for humans that need to reprogram themselves.
@@Just_A_Dude I find most changes in my behavior are for spite, for better or worse.
@@MDuarte-vp7bmthere’s a reason people stay alive out of spite- it works. It’s not pleasant, generally, but you get a lot of older folks who have stayed alive simply to stick it out and be grumpy til the very end xD
I do like Tom Lum's energy. He is very energised which flows through to his audience. Welcome Tom to SciShow.
I actually don't. It's a bit like someone who tries too much to be excited for a tiktok video but now he's extending it for 15min+
@@Fr00ter Maybe that the hosts are just acting as they believe is expected by the audience. I just like the energy that Tom Kum is portraying. Very similar to the young lady who has left Sci Show.
I miss seeing Olivia on Sci Show 😢
8:20 Please tell me you used the phrase "this wasn't *as silly of* an investigation as it sounds" on purpose, because the silly/cilia pun is glorious.
i totally believe the second one. when i was trying to cut down on smoking i discovered that my resolve not to smoke was strongest if i needed to pee
that’s super interesting!
Similarly, if I had to drive late at night and not get drowsy, I would drink lots of water. Fighting the urge to pee really kept me alert.
@@Outdoors49Manexactly how it's so easy to sleep when dehydrated, but impossible when needing to go.
I'm going to try this!
Definitely worked for each of my cross country drives.
I like this new host, he's really good at engaging, reminds me of Hank
feels like he's trying too hard, but I'll give him time.
Unfortunately I think he's only a temporary host; he's also one of the cohosts of the podcast "Let's Learn Everything" and he was described as a "guest host" for SciShow. I could be wrong though, and I like him a lot so I hope he sticks around for a while
One suggestion for improvement is watching the constant repeating hand gesture that can become a little distracting from what he's delivering
I’ve seen some of Tom’s other content. Always entertaining
Yooo, is this the math dude? He's fun :D
That last one - what a lost opportunity. In my teens (50+ years ago), friends and I thought it was hilarious to stage a "look up", and see how many uplookers we could catch, before quietly slipping away one by one. If only I had kept notes, that ig-noble could have been mine.
That's what science is. The difference between "Hold my Beer..." and science is writing it down
Students, the guinea pigs of human sciences 😅😂🤣😁
we’re all broke and sometimes studies give you gift cards
we know sooo much about freshmen 😊
Studies = extra credit!
The Ig Nobel proves that even bizarre curiosity can lead to breakthroughs… or at least a great story!
1:30 i have confusing feelings with this pillow fights of two tatooed smiling men now thanks
10:10 I know it's accidental, but this moment looked hilariously savage. The guy on the right looks like he goes in for a kiss at the exact same time the guy on the left looks down at his phone.
I just now realized I clicked on this video without even reading the title I just seen sci show and knew it would be interesting so its up next to watch
same! half the time i just click knowing whatever they’re going to teach me about is so worth it
Same here. Pavlov would be proud of us.
Click
The Clickers show the importance of good quality feedback. Shoutout to my old manager who complained in front of me about an anonymous complaint of how we never got any feedback from them. (It was my complaint.)
The clicker probably enhances memory by adding an additional sensory association with success, even without a treat. More connections equals stronger memory.
There was a study using clickers on humans which used kids taking ballet. You're not supposed to look down at your feet when you go into the various positions, but that can make it hard for beginners to know when they've got it right. This paired up the students, having the one with the clicker watch the other's feet and click when they got the position right. Then they'd swap.
It worked really well! It gave immediate feedback, telling them the *moment* they got it correctly, allowing them to learn how it felt without having to ruin their posture by looking down, directly at their feet or into a mirror. And the click is much more precise than saying "That's it!" or "Excellent!"
Host needs a raise, terrific job
His name is Tom Lum, he also has his own channel that he recently started, and is one third of the Let's Learn Everything podcast.
On #10. When my dad was younger, in the 1940's, he and some friends would walk in downtown San Antonio. One would stop and stare up then another would until they had amassed a huge crowd. Then they would step back and watch the people trying to figure out what was up there. Ah, the fun kids had before smart phones and the internet.
Looking up reminds me of the old commuter trick. Whenever I went through Grand Central Station when it was crowded I would look up in order to convince the people I was walking towards I didn't see them that way they would get out of my way rather than me having to get out of theirs.
The little rascals proved this theory 90 yrs ago. A guy has a doctor put a bandage on his neck while the guy's head is tilted back and the doctor tells him to keep his head in that position. He goes outside to wait for a taxi and draws a crowd looking up that allows the Little Rascals to sneak into a movie theater. Ah, delinquency.
@@NotSoMuchFranklyIt works with phones, too. Walking while staring down at phone will have others go around. Inevitably, someone else will do the same and you will get food or drink spilled on you. It's the walking version of not waiting your turn at a stop sign. It's fine until it's not.
@@MDuarte-vp7bm Hijinks ensue.
that "controlling the urge to pee" is similar to don't go shopping on empty stomach.
A lesson I still have not learned, apparently.
I heard recently that a long-standing decongestant drug was found upon systematic review to not actually be effective. I wondered if the congestion study was testing against that one - looked it up and turns out they used a different kind.
It's only ineffective if taken orally. Still very effective if used as a nasal spray.
Yeah, phenylephrine is already known to be ineffective since the beginning. Now the only currently known working oral decongestant is pseudoephedrine. Which sucks because it's extremely hard to obtain those.
The Ig Nobels are terrific! They're often absolutely hilarious and expose some of our deepest "secrets" in some rather unconventional ways.
Tom Lum is killing it....
So the old saw about "two hearts beating as one" is a scientific fact? Damn, that's actually romantic.
When you selected the avocados as stand - ins for testicles, were you aware that the Nahuatl word “ahuacatl” means “testicle” and that from there we get our word for the tasty fruit😂🥑😂🥑😂🥑
Tasty fruit?
@@JiveDadsonavocado is a fruit
@qwerty81808 Double your entendres.
@@JiveDadson you’re a fruit?
This is a fun fact that they included in a sci show video around 8 years ago actually!
On the orgasm effects to decongest your sinuses, I used to work in the horse industry. At the breeding shed, the stallion’s nose will often run while breeding. 😮
Hey, don't kink shame.
How big are kleenexes for horses??
@ However big the back of your shirt is when they wipe their nose on you. True story
When I'm sick I feel somewhat better after I "have fun".
@ yes. Probably an endorphin release.
My mom used to joke that you should stare at the ceiling, just to mess with people. 🤣 I'm delighted her joke has a scientific backing
Those are some top-tier segues, Tom exclamation point lol, from listening to Let's Learn Everything!, I can be pretty confident when I say that you wrote a good portion of the script.
3:51 isn't this also used for amputees to combat phantom limb pain?
Yep. It's called "Mirror therapy".
@@faceoctopus4571 I wonder when they'll develop treatment for phantom pain in parts we can't usually see? I had root canal work over 15 years ago and I still have sensitivity in that tooth. There is literally no nerve in it to feel pain any more!
I saw that episode of House, yeah.
Hair as protection from impacts and abrasions is an old (and still pretty good) theory. Though the "fighting" part is a speculative stretch IMO... Guys run into stuff and fall down plenty ;)
On the clicker training... You can literally train yourself using that sort of basic reinforcement training! Seriously, you're basically using the our conscious mind to condition/train your subconscious mind. We are animals after all.
I assume the fighting idea is to partially explain why having a beard is so closely related to testosterone
10:09 Aww... How adorable! They must be such good friends/roommates.
oh my GOD they were ROOMMATES
Brothers, even!
I love hearing the IG Nobel special on NPR radio around Thanksgiving time!
"I'm bored, please stop" LOL
Meeting your partner on a blind date for a research project with eye trackers and heart rate monitors attached would be the most incredible how we met story.
I love this episode!!!!😊 Science doesn't always need to be about great break throughs. Super cool to learn more about ourselves! SCIENCE!!!
V.S Ramachandran had successfully used a mirror reflecting the intact arm of an amputee to suppress pain felt in the phantom limb.
Also, the click method was found to improve training of surgeons as this reflects a pass/fail binary, where's commentary from the instructor can carry the baggage of the instructor's (often negative) biases. The click has been applied to more training regimens since.
Ramachandran’s book is a pretty interesting read!
I was looking through comments to see if anyone else mentioned them using mirrors to help treat phantom pain for amputees. I always find that effect fascinating.
i love to play with the idea irl behind the last nobel prize “ones a crowd”, and regularly look intently at nothing just for someone to also look and be either concerned or disappointed
Great script, really smooth transitions.
That last one reminds me of that chimp experiment:
A goup of chimps is hanging around. There is a ladder with a treat waiting at the top. However, if they were to try to climb the lader past a certain point, the entire group would be hosed down with water. I don't remember if the treat was snatched away or if they at least got to keep that.
This is done until all chimps have learned to keep of the ladder.
Then a chimp is switched for a different one who doesn't know about the danger if the ladder. He will try to climb the ladder but the other chimps will prevent him, by beating him up.
New chimps will be rotated in one at a time until all the chimps that witnessed the punishment will be gone. None of the chimps in there at the end ever experienced the actual punishment for trying to get the treat. They just experienced the punishment by by the other chimps and maybe whatever they communicated to them.
I wonder what would happen in the staring up experiment if once a large enough crowd formed, the original person just left. How long would people stay standing there until they realize they have no good reason to stand there?
Entirely variable, especially since someone probably works/lives there, and will not leave for many months or years.
There was an interesting study on animals in the neutral zone along the soviet border, even decades after the wall/fence was removed, the animals still wouldn't cross that line
@mehere8038 they probably wouldn't cross it because that specific border was in some way natural(e.g. a river, or mountain range). Usually, areas made uninhabitable by humans are areas where animals thrive(like chernobyl). Human militarized borders are usually only on paper, or only by threat. Physical barriers are expensive, and the USSR did not have them. Nobody that big did.
@@MDuarte-vp7bm ever heard of the Berlin wall? Well that barrier wasn't limited to Berlin, it covered the entire border & was called the "iron curtain". It is now called the "European green belt" & follows that former fence. Animals will go to the former fence line in the middle of an open field, but refuse to cross the former fenceline.
& a patrolled fence is hardly expensive compared to a space program! Of course there was a physical barrier there! Geez it amazes me what people say
@@MDuarte-vp7bm trying again
ever heard of the Berlin wall? Well that barrier wasn't limited to Berlin, it covered the entire border & was called the "iron curtain". It is now called the "European green belt" & follows that former fence. Animals will go to the former fence line in the middle of an open field, but refuse to cross the former fenceline.
I have 99 nose hairs, and always one *NOSE HAIR*
Huh?
@@rainydaylady6596i think it's a super dry word joke, or he was trying to describe how he always has one nose hair that bothers him(probably by sticking out of his nose and making him sneeze).
This was great. Fun topic, good presenter
Love Tom Lum💚
Number 10 also applies to getting ppl to stand in a line and do a wave in a crowd.
"When your nose feels a little stuffy, maybe you need an orgasm." is certainly a sentence I never, ever, ever expected to hear.
The ig nobel is the best: huge inspiration that sometimes weird research actually helps!
Both SciShow and your podcast, Tom, have gotten me really interested in science communication. I may just have to try it out..
13:49 Audio glitch: “People join the crowd, more people join the crowd”
Humans: Yeah humans are the weirdest animals to exist and pretty much everyone agrees!
Platypus: Hear me out guys.
He said weirdest animal, not weirdest mammal.
I would say just birds are also incredibly weird, but birds aren't real, so I guess the platypus wins
In terms of behavior, humans are still the weirdest. We're the only species that deliberately seeks experiences of fear (thrill rides, horror stories, etc) and pain (spicy peppers, athletics, tattoos, etc). Apparently it works as a defense against traumatization from actually bad experiences.
@@doujinflip um dolphins are proven to do that too, others no doubt also do but haven't been confirmed/observed doing so
5:01 so we are golden retrievers?
Good boy, did your yt alarm remind you to watch this video?
Not really. We're basically house plants with complex emotions.
3:05 Really gives a new meaning to pissing away your money.
What percentage of people will look up when they see a cat sitting next to the wall staring up at the ceiling?
My absolute favorite Ig Nobel is “placebos that cause side affects are more effective than placebos that do NOT cause side affects.”
What this tells us is that it is entirely possible that current medication that causes side affects may not actually be effective and only perceived as effective. Think about it!!!
It doesn't really tell you that, because most medications go through studies with placebo controls before getting approved, so we would know about it if they weren't any more effective than a placebo.
Not to mention the "nocebo" effect -- people experiencing negative side effects from placebos.
I’m addicted to placebos. I’d quit but it wouldn’t matter.
Steven Wright.
This is how I feel about most cold medicines. I don't generally believe they do anything, and when I take them for a cold, my belief is generally reinforced.
@@TheRealTimMeredith you misunderstood his supposition. He was saying that some side effects are welcome or distracting enough to reduce the perception of the symptoms. Or perhaps that we are more willing to trust a medication is working if there are distracting side effects. I think one example of this is phenylephrine compared to pseudoephedrine. Phenylephrine is a measurable effective decongestant... that doesn't work. Some combination of side effects is causing pseudoephedrine to functionally reduce the perception of symptoms, even if phenylephrine is "just as effective."
This honestly was a great episode, id love to hear more of the ig nobel prizes now, as the wierd and random things are still valuable to research. like that synchronized heart rates one was super interesting to hear about.
1:29 well that pillow fight definitely did something to me 😆
A+ transitions!
The writer for this one should get an award for most contiguous silly segues
YESSS i was so hoping you'd do an episode on the ignobels tom
These studies need to be redone and reproduced. Maybe the publicity generated by the prize makes that more likely.
The mirror thing is also used with phantom limb syndrome pain.
This episode was fascinating and hilarious!
I don't know if it was the subject matter, the host... Or both... But either way....
MORE PLEASE!🥰
The last one sounds like a great idea for a prank
I can say this: the algo knows I hunt ideas for content...and you/it/they/whatever just gave me a mother load.
This is one of the funniest things I've seen this year! 🤣
look up the actual results then, they're even funnier!
Narcissistic eyebrows sounds like phrenology for the 21st century
Especially at a time when so many people groom their eyebrows. And if it’s so easy to recognise a narcissist, why do so many people still fall for them? Also, I don’t see anything special about Donald Trump’s eyebrows, and he’s one of the worst narcissists ever. It’s his smirk that gives it away.
Plus a side of racism, when you consider the whole "strong contrast" thing.
That's because it is. This is the kind of thing that gets touted around in books from the 1920s. It's absolutely shameful and disgustiong for SCISHOW to be spreading it in 2024.
@@twinsgardening896 yep. I was trying to be gentle about it, but it’s just straight up bigotry. I’m guessing someone decided to do the study because of the same cultural trends like “face reading” on TikTok. Which is again, just phrenology, sexism, classism, and racism
these segues were incredible. well done!
"Should you go around judging people on their eyebrows? No."
Too bad, I am going to from now on.
🤨🥺😯😫😤
🤣
you should maybe research "phrenology" and why it's considered horrifically bad.
@@twinsgardening896 I know all about phrenology, thankyou.
May I suggest you look into irony, sarcasm and humour.
In the meantime keep your very odd selective outrage to yourself rather than overreacting to posts that are obviously meant in jest.
9:15 I checked, it is on the left.
I’m right rn
lol .. pretty sure we ALL checked.
We need to conduct our own experiment, peer review if you will.
Mine was on the right
7:15 ngl, that corona tattoo is pretty rad. Not really a period of time I’d like to permanently commemorate on my own skin, but to each their own
Good eye, I totally missed the meta-illustration there. However, bc you lured me in for a close look, it seems to me that the nurses sleeve is sewing themed. So, what you/we initially assumed was an image of a coronavirus is in fact one of those tomato pin cushions. Am i wrong?
I love SciShow!!
I used to do the look up trick in Waterloo station. It was fascinating to see how many other people looked up purely because I was
this. was. AMAZING!!! and Tom, your glee and yet also enthusiasm were perfect for this video 😂😁
Seeing tom at the start to talk about the ig nobel is such a delight after listening to the episode of the podcast about it
Somehow I can tell you were no expecting a Nobel Price in October...
The ignobel rewards studies that make you laugh, then think...their own words
#4 - heh, uuuuh yeah, id know nothing about that technique, totally dont use that for, productivity purposes :))))
Excellent job Tom! I've been a fan of yours for a while and its great to see you join Sci Show! You fit in perfect!
For the 7th one, I wonder if they had any participants with a vericocele? Its like a vericose vein in your testicle that about 15% of men have that is most typically on the left that would also increase left testicular temperature!
I like how they connect into each other
Emma Dauster, the writer on this episode, must have made it a personal challenge to segue absolutely every story into the next one. Kudos!
Also, the last story about looking up being contagious doesn't surprise me in the least. We're wired to be both social creatures and also hyper aware of threats in our environment. Seeing another of your species looking at something for an extended period makes it evolutionarily beneficial that you check it out too. Might be danger; might be a tasty snack. My pets do this too. If one checks out something new, it's not long before the others want to know what's up as well.
So proud of you Tom!!!
Hurray for Seth
I didn't expect human clicker training on Sci Show of all things. Glad to know my interest could legitimately help improve skills
The Science Friday radio highlights of the Ig Nobel ceremony is always the highlight of my year
Even if these vids don’t get that many views or interactions, as long as you had fun making them, I see that as a win.
Also, I enjoyed them. So thanks for making this lmao
"...surgeons, who you hope are pretty smart people."
*Recalls Dr. Ben Carson*
Remember the movie "Liar, Liar" if you've watched it. But Jim Carrie's character was asked "Hows it hanging" and he responded "Short, stubby, and always to the left."
Always to the left, huh? The short and stubby part can be their own thing for the movie's humor, however, I took note of the always to the left part.
That movie started my research decades ago, for long enough for me to notice that it's in fact hanging to the left.
I grew up, and let that go, though here I am watching SciShow talk about an Ignoble that answered my question thag I would never ask. I'm a lefty, so I thought that may have has something to do with it, and that's not a joke about what hand I use, I just thought if you're left handed than your doodle is going to hang on the left.
All this because of a movie I saw, and the question I never asked.
2:58 that is counterintuitive and beyond that i destinctly remember a radio broadcast that claimed the exact oppesite
Really great transitions between winners! Very clever and well written and organized!
Well, someone has to ask these questions! I'm proud of these people on the cutting edge.
I wonder how much serious and important science we would miss out on if scientists were hung up on taboos or modesty.
I thought we would have more than 100 nose hairs per nostril tbh.
Your narrator was great! Loved the funny transitions 😅
The left testicle is warmer than the right, the left breast is larger than the right, I wonder what causes the left/right imbalance of paired organs? I know the right lung is generally larger than the left since the heart generally occupies some of the same space that the left lung would occupy, I wonder if the heart’s positioning in the body also contributes to those other effects. Or perhaps it’s something that can vary from person to person, like handedness?
in the case of breasts, it's probably directly linked to handedness & muscle use on that side of the body
Wu-Tang told me to protect my neck so I grew a beard.
huh. don't recall seeing Tom before. I like him.
Is this the best SciShow video yet? Yes
11:25 yeah I don't know about this one, sounds uncomfortably reminiscent of phrenology 🤔
I love how Tom got/conned Scishow to spend more time talking about the Igs
A mirror can also help with phantom limb sensations in amputees!
As a scientist, winning an Ig Nobel Prize is bigger life goal to me than the actual Nobel Prize. To be fair, I work in a field that doesn't have a corresponding Nobel Prize category and *does* have a category in the Ig Nobel Prizes, but still. I would never intentionally set out to win an Ig Nobel Prize, but if I end up doing research that someone thinks is deserving of one, that would be just fantastic.
A fun fact that I love about the Ig Nobels is that to this day there has only been one person to win both an Ig Nobel Prize and an actual Nobel Prize. Sir Andre Geim won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for using magnets to levitate a frog and then won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for his discovery of and work on graphene. He has stated that he values both prizes equally.
You're forgetting my personal favorite, and the favorite of everyone whose parents ever yelled at them for cracking their knuckles. It was 2009 or 2010, a man spent 50 years cracking the knuckles of only one hand to prove that cracking your knuckles does not, in fact, cause arthritis
2:58 so a different version of the marshmallow test. Delayed gratification is better.
Meanwhile I procrastinate my pee and I struggled with delayed gratification
Great segues!