But this year, for the first time, one actually came. Harold Moi came all the way from Oslo to receive the IgNobel Public Health Prize. He'd co-authored a paper in the journal, Genitourinary Medicine . Two other winners, also from Norway, couldn't come but they sent a videotaped acceptance speech to the Norwegian consul in Boston who presented it for them. Once awardees choose to play the game, the humor suffers in an odd way.
Good scientists know perfectly well that new ideas look strange.
I'm reminded of how, years ago, Senator Proxmire awarded one of his Golden Fleece awards to an engineer who'd won a big grant to create six-legged walking robots. It sounded foolish, but six-legged locomotion is an essential problem in practical robotics. The Golden Fleece Awards died of their own shortsightedness soon after. The dishonesty of the tobacco industry makes a perfectly viable target for this sort of thing. But any legitimate original research also looks silly when we compare it with things as they are.