> IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>
Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners (arstechnica.com)
119 pointsby mkl4 days ago46 comments
embedding-shape 4 days ago
Some great winners this time, personal favorite:
VyseofArcadia 4 days ago
This one feels like it deserves more than just an Ig Nobel.
Tomte 4 days ago
zdragnar 4 days ago
Far more or far less? The study is so profoundly flawed that it should be in a hall of shame, along with whatever journal published it.
dinfinity 4 days ago
It's not really a surprise that less ethical people on average are richer than ethical people. Sad, but logical: they more often choose selfishly and thus amass more money.
This is the correct direction of causation in this case, imho.
underlipton 4 days ago
Is it? Wealth is used as a proxy for virtue, and has been for a long time. "Nobility" has two meanings, after all. Why the same word, if not the same root sentiment? Unless one definition was originally meant sarcastically.
zorked 4 days ago
Is it?
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. [I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
underlipton 3 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49582188
That's at least one sector of the Christian world that ignores that line. I don't think they're alone. You also have other etymological canaries like "fortune" meaning both "wealth" and "blessing". The thinking is that good things happen to good people, with "good things" including "coming into money". But, as we see, that seems to be erroneous. Just because good things happen to a person doesn't mean that they're good.
mdp2021 2 days ago
You are reading the term too literally.
(And by the way, you are using a severely outdated translation.)
tontonius 4 days ago
Wait, what does nobility mean other than aristocracy?
sparky_z 4 days ago
You've never heard something selfless and good described as "noble"?
mdp2021 2 days ago
> what does nobility mean other than aristocracy
"Noble" means "known". "Aristos" means "best" (best fit). The "noble" (the notables) are empowered ("-cracy") for being the best ("aristos").
Moral qualities, practical abilities, enabling the exercise of a role in society.
conception 4 days ago
It definitely benefits those with power to have it being considered such. Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
dinfinity 3 days ago
You're countering logic rooted in psychology and economics with etymology and linguistics?
How does "ancient people consider the wealthy virtuous" cancel out "selfish people tend to make more money"?
underlipton 3 days ago
You presented it as something we should have known, because it's logical (and it is). But the problem is that we apparently don't know it, and haven't for some time. It appears as if (part of) humanity has gotten it wrong for so long that it's written into our language.
dinfinity 3 days ago
Nonsense. The logic based on etymology doesn't show that at all. Most people alive right have never even used the word "nobility", let alone do they let their worldview be defined by it.
They may have used the word "noble", but very probably did not link that to wealth.
mdp2021 2 days ago
> Most people alive... have never even used the word... let alone do they let their worldview be defined by it
Support your statements, show it. Most people alive would have not been informed on basic ethics, nor basic language?!
dinfinity 2 days ago
I made and supported my initial claim. The burden of proof here is on the person who claimed that the etymology of "nobility" somehow disproves my initial claim.
mdp2021 a day ago
> my initial claim
Not your initial claim: the claim of the median human not being aware of basic dictionary and ethics.
Of course psychopathy as lack of restraint facilitates amassing riches.
To state the absence of family and schools and contact with books for a majority indicates a weird world view, or an impossibility to put heterogeneous populations in the same basket.
underlipton 2 days ago
You're making a lot of assumptions, not least of which is that "noble" is the only word linking material wealth and intrinsic goodness. See also "fortune", "blessing", "worth", "value", "credit". Consider also the opposite, like "destitution" (material or moral).
To be clear, I am saying that the link these words connote is wrong, and that it's indeed logical to expect a wealthy person to be selfish. I'm just saying that something drove our culture to forego that logic and make the erroneous link described, and it's written in our language. I can't tell you where that link comes from.
dinfinity 2 days ago
I think this is stretching it quite a bit.
I can go along with us having the tendency to determine the value of things in terms of money, but not with determining how virtuous somebody in terms of wealth. The former is morally neutral (even though it does pull society away from thinking in terms of what actually matters to wellbeing etc.), the latter isn't.
None of the examples you mentioned equate wealth with virtue/ethical behavior. "Nobility" does to an extent.
With regard to modern day connotations of wealth: I'd say that most people associate it with either luck or being savvy in some way; definitely not with ethical behavior.
howunfortunate 4 days ago
I knew immediately this was BS, sure enough, someone already beat me to it with the comment explaining why.
Man, I'm so ashamed of my field (experimental psychology). Maybe ~60% of publications are literally worse than useless (that is, they are outright intentional lies).
bethekidyouwant 4 days ago
The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why anyone would even bother engaging with (experimental psychology)
howunfortunate 4 days ago
If you have a Ph.D. you can somewhat sort the wheat from the chaff. But it's 100% not worth it for the layman. Better to just ignore it.
That's why, even though it's incredibly sad to see, I can hardly begrudge the current administration their "defund anything and everything using keyword search". Since they can't trust the experts, that's really about the best that can be done from their perspective.
analog31 4 days ago
The ones who are vetting these articles have PhDs.
Disclosure: PhD
howunfortunate 3 days ago
Oh, I know.
There are many reasons why peer review doesn't work including but not limited to (1) motivated reasoning AKA complicity in whatever lie is being pushed (2) no real incentive to put effort into peer review (3) laziness and irresponsibility, see also point 2 (4) the "somewhat" qualifier I put in my original comment.
I'm being critical of peer reviewers here, but it's a genuinely very difficult job that takes massive effort to do well.
And then there's actual malpractice like editing data, which is functionally impossible to catch in peer review if the authors are clever. The whole system replies on trust, and trust is completely underserved.
dwattttt 4 days ago
Are you impugning the good name of the Ig Noble awards? For shame!
peter_d_sherman 4 days ago
>"But this year’s winning team didn’t go the robot route; instead, they adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. [...] The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips."
Strangely, this idea has at least a small amount of merit... The idea that an organic, carbon-based structure (in the above case, a mosquito proboscis -- but it could have been a separate, non-living individually 3D printed from organic materials, organic part) would make a good 3D print head with exceedingly fine resolution, is not a terrible idea!
(Note that for the record, I do not endorse killing mosquitos, or any other insect to make 3D print heads, or really, anything else!)
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 4 days ago
FWIW IgNoble award winners aren't inherently bad projects. Some are bad research but the winners tend to be projects that just sound weird or stupid but have legitimately research value.
adw 4 days ago
The famous levitating frog guy has the double; one Nobel, one IgNobel.
varjag 4 days ago
A paper am a coauthor of uses an Ig Nobel winning article as a reference. Because in fact it was a serious piece of research with practical implications.
conception 3 days ago
They all are serious research.
varjag 3 days ago
Sure but it’s certainly not the messaging of IgNobel
dguest a day ago
IgNobel has evolved. Years ago their tag line was that they were for research "that cannot or should not be reproduced". Now it's to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".
Over the years they went from being a prize for joke science to a prize for serious science that is funny.
sandworm101 4 days ago
Are they still using the little girl?
THAT invention deserves its own ignoble category for contribution to public discord.
mkl 4 days ago
The official list is at https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 but Ars Technica has a lot more detail.
cfn 4 days ago
I like that so many of the winners attended the ceremony, one should never take yourself too seriously.
magneticnorth 4 days ago
It wasn't clear to me in the article, but the best splash-free urinal ("nautilus"), is the tall skinny one second-from-right in the photo.
In addition to having the correct angle to minimize splash, it also fits a wide range of heights and is easier to clean than some of the other designs they tried.
jmclnx 4 days ago
>The 36th ceremony took place on September 3rd in the Congress Center of Zurich, Switzerland, and was hosted by the University of Zurich and ETH Domain, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests.
Another loss for the US thanks to Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
Also, every political speech needs a "Miss Sweetie Poo".
abirch 4 days ago
The damage done will take decades to fix if it can be fixed. No idea why any other NATO nation would buy any weapons from the USA.
Loughla 4 days ago
They buy our weapons because we make a shit ton of them. We're not great at a lot of things, but manufacturing weapons for mass slaughter is up towards the top of our specialties.
3eb7988a1663 4 days ago
This is likely to change. The US has said that previously agreed arms shipments may be now delayed, because the US is cutting in line to restock their own supplies first.
D-Coder 4 days ago
This article had me at pneumotachometers (emphasis mine):
> Unno used a pair of pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases) in parallel for his experiments to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.
pks016 3 days ago
For Biology; the paper was retracted due to ethical issues.
subarctic 4 days ago
Launched in 1991, so i guess the ig doesn't stand for instagram
maest 4 days ago