Voodoo Dolls, Roller-Coasters for Kidney Stones Win at Ig Nobels

The awards for comical but practical scientific discovery also include cannibalism and self-colonoscopy.

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ABOVE: Riding on Space Mountain and other roller coasters might offer relief to patients with kidney stones, an Ig Nobel–winning study shows.
FLICKR, KEN LUND

Studies of stabbing voodoo dolls of unsavory bosses and riding roller coasters to get rid of kidney stones took top honors at the 2018 Ig Nobels, announced yesterday (September 13) at Harvard University. The awards are spoof prizes published in the Annals of Improbable Research.

The voodoo work stemmed from Lindie Liang of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, who studies workplace aggression. “We wanted to understand why subordinates retaliate when it’s bad for them,” Liang tells The Associated Press. “We all know yelling at our boss is bad for your career. So what’s the function of retaliation? Why do people keep doing it?”

To test this, she and her team showed research subjects online voodoo dolls with their bosses’ initials and could choose to use ...

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Ashley Yeager
Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.
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