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· collected 2026-09-05 · by Brie Stimson
A satirical ceremony, the Ig Nobel awards, was held in Zurich on Thursday to honor unusual but real scientific studies. This year's winners included researchers who studied cockroach milk, the evolutionary history of kissing, and the behavior of upper-class people, such as stealing candy from a baby. According to Dr. Paul Piff, the general pattern is that wealth and rising power lead individuals to prioritize their own needs over others' (no specific numbers mentioned). The ceremony, founded in 1991, typically takes place in the US but was held outside it this year due to visa concerns.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-05,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event.
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No political leaning scored for article 4441 · logged 2026-09-05
A motley crew of scientists was honored this week for its unusual contributions, which included studying cockroach milk, the evolutionary history of kissing and testing soil health by using underwear.
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which → honor → underwear
The satirical Ig Nobel ceremony, which honors unusual but real studies, took place in Zurich Thursday and was presented by the digital magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research.
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which → honor → Research
The awards, which were founded in 1991, took place outside the U.S. for the first time this year over the concern that the honorees wouldn’t be able to get a visa.
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honorees → found → visa
Other winners included researchers who found upper-class people were more likely to engage in unethical behavior, such as stealing candy from a baby, a study on proper nose blowing and gently stepping on snakes to see what provokes them into biting people.
"The general pattern seems to be that, with wealth and rising power, you become less engaged with the needs of others and less burdened by the needs of social relationships," Dr. Paul Piff, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine said, according to the Guardian.
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Piff → include → Guardian
"Taking candy from children might be the least of our worries, but it’s emblematic of the tendency to prioritize one’s own needs over those of others."
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it → take → others
The final four honorees included those studying the power of having mutual enemies, attempts at a splash-free urinal, using dead mosquitos for 3D printing and research that found parents love the smell of their newborn babies but not teenage children.
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parents → include → babies
In case you’re wondering, the team studying the history of kissing has defined it as "a non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer."
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team → wonder → mouthparts
"Next time you kiss someone, you can think, 'This is a 21.5 million-year-old tradition that I'm honoring here," evolutionary biologist Matilda Brindle of the University of Oxford said, according to NPR.
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Brindle → kiss → NPR
And to us, that suggests that it probably has quite a useful evolutionary function."
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it → suggest → function
Brindle said her team believes that Neanderthals not only kissed each other.
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Neanderthals → say → other
They may have also kissed early humans.
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They → kiss → humans
All the honorees receive a trophy that looks like a cross between a mushroom and a human foot while the audience throws paper airplanes at them.
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audience → receive → them
The Ig Nobel has no relation to the actual Nobel Prize, which will announce its honorees in October.
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which → have → October
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Press → contribute → report
