Nominations

Only about two percent of the nominees each year actually win Ig Nobel Prizes, according to Marc A. Abrahams '78, who accepts the nominations year-round.

About 500 people are nominated by mail, e-mail and telephone each year, he said.

Of those, only the names of the most promising nominees are submitted to the Ig Nobel Board of Governors, whose members range from Nobel laureates to people right off the street.

"If people go into shock when they first hear [of the research] then it's definitely a possibility" for submission to the board, Abrahams said.

"A lot of people are deserving of this but only people on the underwater tip of the iceberg are nominated," Abrahams said.

The exotic nominations are the ideas "that make sense in a strange way," like Jay Schiffman's projection device which allows a driver to watch television while on the road, he said.

About third of the nominations each year are either from the researchers themselves or from wives, husbands, bosses and professors. Usually these people do not win.