For those of us who have long viewed America as the authentic home of improbable scientific research, the decision by the Annals of Improbable Research to hold their 2026 Ig Nobel Prize awards ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland comes as something of a shock.
The Annals of Improbable Research is a bimonthly online magazine based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, devoted to scientific humor. (I’d like to get a subscription, if I can swing the $40 a year.)
Yes, science can be funny. But I guess we all knew that.
The Annals have been hosting the Ig Nobel prizes since 1991, to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”
As has been well documented in the scientific literature, people are not typically able to think, unless you first make them laugh.
Even then, some people are still unable to think. But we keep trying.
The Ig Nobel Prizes were previously hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Harvard University — until this summer, when the ceremony was moved to Switzerland due to concerns about visas for the international prize winners.
This was a big concern, because a great deal of ignoble scientific research is now being done outside the U.S., especially since recent cuts to federal grants, here.
The research that won the 2026 Biomechanics Prize, for example, would likely not get funded here in America, if the current White House had anything to say about it. Not just only it was scientific, but also because it involved kissing.
BIOMECHANICS PRIZE 2026 [UK, USA]
Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot, and Stuart West for devising a more precise definition of kissing in ants, birds, polar bears, and humans.
From the abstract of their paper in the journal Science Direct:
Kissing can be observed across the animal kingdom. This presents an evolutionary puzzle, since the fitness benefits of kissing are unclear. We use a non-anthropocentric approach to define kissing as a non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer.
I wasn’t familiar with the term “non-agonistic” which I guess, in biology, refers to non-aggressive, non-hostile behaviors. So according to this scientific definition — related to behaviors in humans as well as other species — an aggressive, hostile kiss is not, in fact, a kiss at all.
It’s something, but not a kiss.
Good thing to know.
The award-winning scientists noted that kissing presents an evolutionary puzzle, since “the fitness benefits of kissing” are unclear.
Unclear, that is, to certain scientists.
Many scientists have fully accepted the theory that the most “fit” examples of any species are the ones most likely to pass on their genes to future generations. This theoretical evolutionary process is often referred to as “survival of the fittest”.
The winners of the Biomechanics Prize are clearly among this group of scientists, who are clueless about who actually gets to pass their genes on to future generations.
It’s not necessarily “the fittest”. It’s the ones who are best at kissing.
Anyone can verify this for themselves, by taking a walk through the aisles at City Market and noting the people who are toting children. These are not always people you would, by definition, classify as “the fittest”.
But they obviously know how to kiss.
There are, of course, other problems with the accepted evolutionary theory that “the fittest” tend to survive, and that therefore the species continually “improves”.
Scientists claim that the species known as Homo sapiens has been reproducing for 300,000 years, but simple observation suggests that the world is being run by people entirely unfit for their jobs. You’d think, after 300,000 years of evolution, that the best people would be running the show. But no.
This evolutionary puzzle was addressed, after a fashion, by another team of Ig Nobel Prize winners.
ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA]
Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper-class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior.
In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these scientists used “experimental and naturalistic methods to prove that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals.”
The scientists studied tendencies such as breaking traffic laws, dishonesty in negotiations, cheating to increase their chances of winning a prize, and endorsing unethical behavior at work. They found that upper class snobs are the least ethical.
Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.
Explains a lot about the world.
Including, perhaps, why the Ig Nobel ceremony is now being held in Switzerland.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.