Michelle Spierings wrote about the recent Ig Nobel show in Leiden, The Netherlands. A behavioral biologist at the Institute of Biology Leiden and the University of Vienna, Austria, Spierings had a starring role in the show. Her essay appears in the July 5, 2026 issue of Bionieuws. Here is a machine translation from the original Dutch into English:
Boomerangs, bananas and tampon manuals
Last week, the Ig Nobel Party came to Leiden. Not for the presentation of the new prizes, but simply to have a fun event with founder Marc Abrahams, Dutch prize winners, and local scientists.
The Ig Nobel Prize is for ‘ research that first makes you laugh, and then makes you think ‘. And that is exactly it. The Ig Nobel Prize is not for crazy research, but for very good research that is, for some reason, also very comical.
The Dutch Ig Nobel Prize winners who were present spoke about their winning research. A remarkable study was conducted by Ida Sabelis, among others. She was the first person (and the second, because you do it together) to have sex in an MRI scanner. A friend of hers finally wanted to properly investigate the interaction, and Ida and her husband were thin and flexible enough to fit. The study showed that the male penis takes on a kind of boomerang shape and that, actually even more interesting, the female vagina is not tilted diagonally as it was often depicted.
Ida spoke not only about how this research came about, but also about her frustration that the media essentially only wrote about the angle of the penis, even though that had not been their most important discovery. The drawings on tampon manuals will still be wrong in 2026. While Ida was talking about this, she continued her presentation just a little longer than the allotted 9 minutes. And at the Ig Nobel Awards, they are always looking for the best ways to stop people who talk too long as efficiently as possible.
Ida was slowly pushed off the stage by three bananas in costume. A very efficient strategy, because she could no longer reach the microphone. At other Ig Nobel events, there is an 8-year-old girl who walks slowly up to the speaker and then repeatedly says: ‘ Please stop, I’m bored, please stop, I’m bored.’ Also an excellent strategy to ensure that someone stops talking almost immediately.
There has been one person, Andre Heim, who first won the Ig Nobel Prize and then the Nobel Prize. In 2000, he won the Ig Nobel for levitating a live frog using magnetism. Ten years later, he won the Nobel Prize for his research on the electromagnetic properties of graphene. Just to demonstrate that fun research can certainly be important research as well.
I gave a 24/7 talk myself during this event. A well-known concept within the Ig Nobel ceremonies. You have to give a complete technical summary in 24 seconds. After that, you give a seven-word explanation that is understandable to everyone. It seemed like a fairly impossible, but fun challenge to me. None other than the beadle of Leiden University was keeping time, and after exactly 24 seconds you were brutally stopped by the recognizable bell that has also signaled the end of many a PhD defense.
It was a true delight to meet the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize and to see how humor and science can go together perfectly.
