Volkswagen "Won" an Ig Nobel for Its Emissions Scandal

Many odd uses of science and one harmful one.

The 2015 Ig Noble Awards

The Ig Noble Prizes, the tongue-in-cheek scientific tradition going back twenty-six years, have just announced its latest winners.

First established at Harvard in 1991, the Ig Nobels celebrate odd and potentially uses scientific breakthroughs of the year. The awards weren't actually recorded until 1995, but ever since they've grown in popularity as a chance to view science from a unique, self-aware angle. Actual Nobel Prize winners hand out the awards. Most of those roasted by the Ig Nobles gladly accept the awards, both aware of the oddity of their work and eager for a chance to promote it.

In a rare use of the Ig Nobles to tackle scientific corruption, a Chemistry Ig Noble was given to Volkswagen this year "for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested." An obvious reference to last year's diesel emissions scandal, where the German car manufacturer was found to be tricking automotive inspectors into thinking their cars were cleaner than they actually were.

Other awards this year were more in line with Ig Noble tradition. The Physics Ig Noble was presented to Susanne Åkesson, who was part of a team that was given the award in recognition of "discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones."

The 2016 Economics Ig Noble had a geologic aspect to it, with Mark Avis and Sarah Forbes "assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective." According to their paper, rocks were "chosen stimuli as they do not have any obvious commonalities with brands."

You can find all the other Ig Noble Prize Award winners here.

Source: Ig Nobles via Gizmodo

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