Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Kominers’s Conundrums: A Nobel by Any Other Name

Can you decipher this showcase of silly-sounding awards?

September 20, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

A German chemist whose third focus was an absolute zero?
Photographer: Digital Light Source/Universal Images Group Editorial

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This past week marked one of the biggest science geek events of the year: the Ig Nobel Prize awards, showcasing some of the most silly-sounding scholarship. This year’s winners included researchers who examined narcissists’ eyebrows, tested dung knives, and put alligators on helium.

While all that does sound a little ridiculous, it’s actually hard to tell! Even major discoveries can seem a bit absurd at first, especially if phrased inelegantly.