Best of the Ig Nobel prizes 2010 - opinion - 01 October 2010 - New Scientist
Like the other Nobels – five recipients of which were on hand to present the awards – the Ig Nobels committee, convened as always by the Annals of Improbable Research, can take its time to make an award. Manuel Barbeito, Charles Matthews and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office at Fort Detrick, Maryland, for instance, were honoured for a laboratory peril first recognised in 1967.
"A scientist who had never given us any problems grew a beard when he was working in containment lab," Barbeito explains. The scientist refused to shave, because there was no evidence that his facial fuzz posed a hazard. So Barbeito and three volunteers grew their own beards for 73 days, then sprayed them with harmless bacteria and demonstrated that it was harder to wash the germs out of a beard than off clean skin.
Not content with that, they put a fake beard on a mannequin, sprayed it with pathogenic bacteria, and exposed it to hapless chickens and guinea pigs, some of which in due course got sick. Their bearded colleague capitulated, and shaved. (Applied Microbiology, vol 15, p 899).
*Full disclosure: Mojonaut and friend of the site, Le Diva, is part of the Ig Nobels*