The winners of the 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes are out! Just think of the thousands of dollars that went into the research that showed that bits of string, hair etc. will eventually turn themselves into knots. How did an international research team discover that Coca Cola is a good spermicide? The biology prize went to researchers who showed that dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas and the economics prize to people who established that lap dancers get higher tips when ovulating.

The award for medicine went to people who proved that expensive placebos are more effective than cheap ones. And – we’d better watch out. Amoebas can solve puzzles. Which ones, I wonder? Let us not forget the hard labour that went into figuring out ways of ‘electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is’. That one was a joint effort between Oxford University and an Italian University. No wonder Oxford is putting up its fees.

So that was some of the best of 2008, but let’s not forget the classics from previous years: the intellectual effort (and cash) that went into showing that rats can’t tell the difference between Japanese and Dutch played backwards. Or the medical paper on the side effects of sword-swallowing. How to extract vanilla from cow dung. How to cure intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage…

The prizes are awareded by the fabulous ‘Annals of Improbable Research’, now free access online at www.improbable.com