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The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991. With the exception of three prizes that year (see Administratium, Psychoceramics, and Paul DeFanti), all of them have been awarded for genuine achievements. The awards are sometimes veiled criticism — as in the two awards given for homeopathy research — but more often drawn attention to scientific articles that have some funny or non-serious aspect on them.
Examples of prize-winning research range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.
Unlike the Darwin Awards, whose aim is strictly to entertain, the aim of the Ig Nobel is also to arouse public interest in science. The ceremony is recorded and broadcast on National Public RadioFor other meanings of NPR see NPR (disambiguation National Public Radio NPR is a private, not-for-profit corporation that sells programming to member radio stations; together they are a loosely organized public radio network in the United States. NPR was, and for the last few years, the Ig Nobel Tour performed shows in BritainThe word Britain is used to refer to the United Kingdom (UK): i. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (from 1927), the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ( 1801- 1927) or the United Kingdom of Great Britain ( 1707- 1801). during National Science Week .
In 1995, Sir Robert May, the chief scientific advisor to the British government, requested that the organizers no longer award Ig Nobel prizes to British scientists, claiming that the awards risked bringing "genuine" experiments into ridicule. May was roundly critized by the British press, and his request was ignored.
Since 2001, it has been possible to watch the Ig Nobel prizes live over the Internet. After a period of around a month, the ceremony is then available for streaming using Real Player on several bandwidths.
Note that the name itself is a pun on the common English mispronunciation of the Nobel Prize as "noble prize"; the name Nobel properly has the accent on the second syllable.
The ceremony is followed a few days later by the Ig Informal Lectures at MIT, in which laureates have opportunity to explain their achievements and their relevance to the general public.
Two books have been published as of 2004 with writeups on some of the winners, BooksEnthsiast.com (hardback), BooksEnthsiast.com (paperback).