Dutch scientists win Ig Nobels for 350,757 coin flips, drunk worm study

For the fifth consecutive year, Dutch scientists have won Ig Nobel Prizes. Dutch professor Eric-Jan Wagenmakers won in the Probability category for his research into coin flips. And a Dutch-French team won the Chemistry prize for their research involving racing drunk and sober worms to study the separation of active polymers.

Wagenmakers, affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, and a team of international scientists investigated an earlier scientifically substantiated theory that, in a coin flip, the coin will more often land on the side facing up in the hand but that it makes very little difference.

To extensively investigate this theory, 48 participants worldwide spent an estimated 650 hours tossing a coin 350,757 times and recording the results. They found that the chance is not 50-50, but that there is a 51 percent chance that the coin will land on the side that was initially facing up.

Another University of Amsterdam study won in the Chemistry category. Dutch and French researchers Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen used chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded annually in ten categories to research that makes you laugh, but also makes you think. Other prize winners included a study demonstrating the swimming capacity of a dead trout - “I discovered that a living fish moves more than a dead fish, but not that much,” said researcher James Liao - a study that showed that fake medicines that cause side effects can be more effective than fake medicines with no side effects, and one showing that some mammals can breathe through their anuses.