Ig Nobel Prize Winners Discover Alternate Way to Relieve an Itch

Here’s something to try: If you have an itch on the left side of your body, look in the mirror and scratch the right side of your body to see if it relieves the itch.

You can thank Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders and Andreas Sprenger for discovering that (and vice versa) works. They are winners of the 2016 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people laugh, and then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative—and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.

Ever wonder whether things look differently if you bend over and view them between your legs? Wonder no more. Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi from Japan, winners of the Ig Nobel Perception Prize have already investigated it.

Other helpful information uncovered by this year’s prize winners include the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, as well as the sex life of human males; the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective; the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead; and why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses and why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones.

In addition, Volkswagen won the Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested.