Created the SpeechJammer — a machine that disrupts a person's speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.
Recipients: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada
Demonstrated that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.
Recipients: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford
Issued a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
Recipient: The US Government General Accountability Office
Advised doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode.
Recipients: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti
Each predicted the world would end on a specific day on or before October 21, 2011, teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.
Recipients: Dorothy Martin, Pat Robertson, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Lee Jang Rim, Credonia Mwerinde, and Harold Camping
Demonstrated that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.
Recipients: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania.
Created and promoted new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
Recipients: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar
Disproved the old belief that oil and water don't mix.
Recipients: Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, and BP [British Petroleum].
Demonstrated mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.
Recipients: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo.
Created diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.
Recipients: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño
Analytically determined why pregnant women don't tip over.
Recipients: Katherine K. Whitcome, Daniel E. Lieberman, and Liza J. Shapiro.
Gave people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big —
by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000). Recipient: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank.
Electronically modified the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
Recipients: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence.
Demonstrated that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.
Recipients: Dan Ariely , Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, and Ziv Carmon.
Showed that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.
Recipients: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés.
Explored and explained why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
Recipients: Ivan R. Schwab, and Philip R.A. May.
Invented an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults;
and later used that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but probably not to their teachers. Recipient: Howard Stapleton.
Conducted experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
Recipients: D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand.
Wrote the report 'Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.'
Recipient: Daniel Oppenheimer.
Investigated the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.
Recipient: Jillian Clarke
Jointly gave birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law: 'If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it.'
Recipients: John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols.
Wrote the irresistible report 'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces.'
Recipients: Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams.
Wrote the report 'Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain.'
Recipients: N. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming.
Made a probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents.
Recipients: Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari.
Invented a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth — the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
Recipients: George and Charlotte Blonsky
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