Ig Nobel: Contained in the World of Science That Makes Individuals Chortle

Sarraju questions the boundaries of respectable science and who gets to decide what counts as that.

Why is it that people respect cancer research more than studies looking at wombat poop? Or why does space research belong in a funding hierarchy higher than other research? What distinguishes important science from not-so-important science?

These are some of the questions that plagued Upasana Sarraju, a molecular ecologist-turned science communicator, the more she thought about people who pushed the boundaries of science. This led her on a quest to explore the dichotomy between scientific questions that society meets with approval and those that it dismisses.

The output of that journey, now published as a book UNRULY: The Ig Nobel Prizes and the Science That Refuses to Behave, seeks to answer what society naturally considers important and respectable science. By using the Ig Nobel prizes—which spotlight “research that makes people laugh, then think”—as a lens, Sarraju broke down what counts as “real” science and who decides what science stories people hear.

“It’s a book about science and scientists that refuse to sit still,” said Sarraju. “I describe it even [in] the jacket copies as, ‘An ordinary thinker’s love letter to weird science and weirder scientists.’”

From Graduate School to the Ig Nobel Universe

The idea began as a writing assignment that was part of Sarraju’s master’s in science writing program at Johns Hopkins University. As a long-time fan of the Ig Nobel prize, she reached out to Marc Abrahams, who created the award, hoping to cover the questions that Ig Nobel science helps answer. Unable to fit the hour-long interview into the confines of a short article, she tucked away some information in a folder on her computer and forgot all about it.

A couple of years later, Sarraju came across the India Science Book Fellowship offered by The Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology to write a nonfiction popular science book. Scouring through her notes to find potential topics, she came across her records on the Ig Nobel prize and the nuances of quirky science. “[The story came] more out of convenience than wanting to change the world,” admitted Sarraju.

Thus began her journey of interviewing dozens of people, ranging from Ig Nobel prize-winning scientists to those who had never heard of the prizes. The book, according to Sarraju, takes readers on a tour of the Ig Nobel universe, highlighting the funny science that makes people think even after the amusement has passed.

Reflecting on Power Structures in Science

Throughout the book, Sarraju tried to answer the inconvenient questions of what qualifies as real science and who makes those decisions. While she did not get exact answers about why people respect some scientific questions more than others, the process of writing the book taught her more about who holds the power to frame and contextualize science.

“We tend to look up to people who are in better positions than us as having earned that position by being better than us,” explained Sarraju. “It seems like we tend to agree with what most people are saying most of the time,” she added. “This doesn’t mean that we’re cowards or we don’t have independent thinking, but it’s just a tendency to want to belong.”

Sarraju hopes that her book will inspire readers to question who they consider credible while categorizing science as more or less worthy of research. While it is difficult to change the way one looks at serious versus not-so-serious scientific ideas, she hopes this awareness will help people reflect more deeply on their beliefs. “The second you become aware of…what your tendencies are to categorizing this dichotomy, you become that much more empowered to walk away from it,” said Sarraju.