Meet the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize winners

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel prizes. Credit: Warner Bros. Credit: Warner Bros. Does one’s social status have any bearing on a given person’s tendency to engage in unethical behavior? To find out, the authors conducted seven related studies to examine this issue from multiple angles. For example, one field study assessed whether upper-class drivers (as adjudged by the type of car driven) were more or less likely to cut off other vehicles at a busy four-way intersection. Another one looked at whether such drivers were more likely to cut off pedestrians at a crosswalk. Yet another study tested whether subjects in a lab-based setting were more or less likely to help themselves to wrapped candies intended for children in another lab—a test of entitlement. And so forth. Again and again, the upper-class participants proved more likely and willing to engage in various kinds of unethical activity, whether it be cutting off cars or pedestrians, taking candy from babies, or lying about their scores in a series of random dice rolls. They were also more likely to view greed as a positive attribute. That said, the authors also acknowledged the likelihood of exceptions: there are several notable examples of philanthropic and/or ethical wealthy individuals, for example, and past research has shown a correlation between concentrations of poverty and violent crime. Still, their experiments do suggest that “the pursuit of self-interest is a more fundamental motive among society’s elite,” they concluded. Credit: H. Zell/CC BY-SA 3.0 Credit: H. Zell/CC BY-SA 3.0 Credit: Leandro Avelar/CC BY-SA 4.0 Credit: Leandro Avelar/CC BY-SA 4.0 According to the authors, the key to optimal splash-free urinal design is the angle at which the pee stream strikes the porcelain surface. Get a small enough angle, and there won’t be any splashback. Instead, you get a smooth flow across the surface, preventing droplets from flying out. (And yes, there is a critical threshold at which the urine stream switches from splashing to flowing smoothly because phase transitions are everywhere—even in our public restrooms.) It turns out that dogs have already figured out the optimal angle as they lift their legs to pee, and when the team modeled this on a computer, they pegged the optimal angle for humans at 30 degrees. The next step was to figure out a design that would offer that optimal urine stream angle for men across a wide range of heights. Instead of the usual shallow box shaped like a rectangle, they landed on the curved structure of the nautilus shell. They conducted simulated urine stream experiments with the prototypes, et voila! They didn’t observe a single droplet splashing back. By comparison, the other urinal designs produced as much as 50 times more splashback. The team did come up with a second design with the same optimal angle, dubbed the Cornucopia, but unlike the Nautilus, it does not fit a range of heights, limiting its usefulness. Credit: Walter Ferrari / 500px Credit: Walter Ferrari / 500px The researchers examined stingers of bees, wasps, and scorpions; the fangs of venomous snakes; and the claws of centipedes. All of these evolved to deliver a fluid to the target, which is roughly what a 3D printer’s nozzle does. But they all had issues that made them not quite the right choice for high-precision 3D printing. Continuous flow optimization, on the other hand, was a feature of some proboscises that certain insects use to draw blood from their prey. These were usually very thin and robust to enable piercing through thick skin, and straight to make feeding easier. The final choice of nozzle donors came down to a decision between tsetse flies, sandflies, aphids, bed bugs, assassin bugs, and female mosquitoes. The mosquitoes won out. The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips. In the future, printers like this could be used to print scaffolds for living cells or microscopic electronic components. The idea is to replace expensive, traditional 3D printing nozzles with more affordable organic counterparts. Credit: Paramount Pictures Credit: Paramount Pictures They sent participants an activity pack: two pairs of organic cotton men’s underpants, 12 teabags, and a sampling bag for soil collection, along with detailed instructions. Each volunteer selected a site, dug a hole, and collected a soil sample. They then buried the two pairs of underpants and six teabags in front of each and refilled the hole. Participants dug up the first pair of underpants and associated tea bags after 30 days and the second after 60 days, documenting the condition of the items and mailing all the materials to the scientists for analysis. The results: Land use was the most important factor. Underpants decomposed the fastest in private gardens, where soil analysis also revealed the highest levels of organic matter. Lawns showed the least activity of soil organisms, with agricultural fields and meadows ranging in the middle. Temperature and moisture levels also affected organism activity, particularly if conditions were too cold or too dry, as did soil nutrient levels. Overall, the authors found that their “underpants index” provided equally meaningful information about soil conditions as the TBI, including chemical and physical properties, elevation, and moisture.