The ceremony started with a bang as members of the official heckler core threw airplanes into the audience and the MIT improve group, "Roadkill Buffet" got a chant and a wave going.
As a deep voice from above commanded everyone to "shut up, damn it," a near-naked man took his place on stage and a harpist began a "decomposed" version of "Pomp and Circumstance."
Members from the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association were among those in attendance, claiming to be the aliens who kidnapped John Mack, a no-show at the ceremony. Mack, who is a professor of psychiatry at the Medical School, is notorious for his study on the victims of alien abduction.
High lights of the award ceremony included the presentation of the biology prize for a breakthrough study on the bowel movement frequency of U.S. Servicemen.
The mathematics prize was awarded to the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama for its county by county estimate of how many Alabamian citizens will go to hell if they don't repent. And the physics prize was given to the Japanese Meterological Agency, for its seven-year study on whether earthquake are caused by catfish moving their tails.
Although the emphasis is on the humor of the "improbable and irreproducible" research, some of the work done is truly legitimate.
According the Geller, "There are things done under the name of science which are ridiculous. But there is also stuff done which sounds funny but is really serious."
The 1200 person Ig Nobel audience was made up of an eclectic group of students, scientists, authors and ordinary citizens who were up for something completely outrageous.
Pat Murray, an MIT employee in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, was at the Ig Nobels for the third year in a row. "It's nuts, because there's nothing else like it," she said.
Adam J. Szubin '95 wasn't planning on attending the ceremony but was rollerblading by the river and came upon MIT. He rollerbladed into MIT and borrowed shoes so that he could attend the event.
"I would definitely say that I expected it to be a geeky, stupid, whoopee cushion joke fest," said Szubin, who is a social studies concentrator. "But I thought it was well-planned and very funny."
But Szubin did denounce the Harvard bashing that went on throughout the ceremony. "For all they made fun of us, 3/4 of the Nobel prize winners were from Harvard," he said.
Michal J. Geller '95 loved watching the Nobel laureates in their electron dance. "It gave me such respect for them that I want to go visit them during their office hours," Geller said.
The point of all this craziness? If not to see dignified scientists make complete fools of themselves, it must be to reveal the true world of science and academics to an unsuspecting public, said John A. Barrett, official Ig Nobel referee and an administrative assistant in the physics department.