The weird and wacky science that won Ig Nobel prizes this year

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” Feedback subscribes fully to the Dodo’s verdict on the Caucus race in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Equally, however, some have won more than others, and they must have further prizes.

From this angle, we approach, gingerly, the scientific world’s top looking-glass awards, the Ig Nobels. Now in their 30th year, the prizes for “achievements that first make people laugh, and then think” were announced last week in a ceremony all the more glittering for being held entirely in the pixels of the internet.

Feedback attended the virtual …