Spectator competition winners: Not the Nobel Prize winners

The latest challenge was to supply an extract from an Ig Nobel Prize-winner’s speech that describes the ‘achievement’ (invented by you) being honoured. The Igs are spoof awards handed out annually at Harvard for scientific achievements that manage to be both hilarious and thought-provoking. In 2014’s Neuroscience category, for example, the award was scooped by Jiangang Liu et al. for their contribution to our understanding of what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast. And just last month, Egyptian urologist Ahmed Shafik was honoured in this year’s Reproduction category for his work testing the effects of wearing various fabrics on the sex life of rats. (The rodents wearing the polyester slacks were found to have ‘significantly lower’ rates of sexual activity.) Moving across to the field of psychology, Evelyne Debey and colleagues were recognised for research that involved asking a thousand liars how often they lie and deciding whether to believe their answers.