Marc Abrahams: "Many people thought I was trying to make scientists look foolish"

BarcelonaThe question surprises and amuses him at once. Marc Abrahams cannot remember his own WhatsApp profile picture. He tries to remember it for a few seconds, and a few more, until he concludes, "It's beyond memorable."

What does a piece of research need to win an Ig Nobel?

— It has to be so good and so deep a surprise that your only reaction—almost a physical one—is to start laughing. And then there's something about it that stays in your head, and all you want to do for the next week is tell your friends about it.

Is there a prize you especially remember?

— In 2003 the Biology Prize went to a Dutch ornithologist, for a paper called The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia…

Sorry?

— …in the Mallard Duck. In my talks I like to say the title slowly, one word at a time. A few people instantly become uncomfortable, and then a few of them become very angry, and then comes the last word: duck. It's like watching a balloon that suddenly had a knife put in it. Everybody ends up laughing.

But isn't science a serious business?

— There are tremendous amounts of money involved, and money is a very serious thing. But if you're a scientist, you know that once in a while you will get lucky, and most of the things you ever try are going to fail. So it helps to have a sense of humor about it.

At school they told us about geniuses who get it right the first time. Doesn't it work that way?

— Most of the time, science starts with somebody noticing something that nobody else has noticed. And they tell the person who works nearest to them, or the people they live with. And what reaction do they get? Usually nothing. Or "That's got to be wrong" or "That's stupid."

Sounds familiar.

— It sounds familiar to everybody. Wouldn't it be nice if people were a little bit more open to listening to you for a minute when you tell them about this idea you had, rather than saying, "You're probably wrong"?

Is that what you got when you first talked about the Ig Nobels?

— The response was very mixed. Some people understood right away, but many people thought I was trying to make scientists look foolish; thus, I must be attacking science. So I thought it would be very interesting if we had Nobel Prize winners handing the prizes to the Ig Nobel Prize winners.

How did you get somebody as serious as Paul Krugman to end up with a bra on his face?

— We keep all information secret until the moment on stage. Not even those Nobel Prize winners know what's coming.

And?

— The 2009 ceremony was the first public demonstration of the emergency bra [by Dr. Elena Bodnar, which turns its two cups into two face masks]. The expression on those Nobel faces when they put them on was a combination of intense embarrassment and intense happiness.

What else has that stage witnessed?

— Our mascot is a version of Auguste Rodin's The Thinker…

Fallen off his pedestal.

— Long ago we had a marathon runner with alopecia—who also liked people to appreciate that he was in excellent physical shape—and he was our living statue for the whole 90 minutes of the ceremony.

With all that spectacle, do the candidates take it well?

— We offer the prize secretly: whoever doesn't want it turns it down quietly, and it's never mentioned again. But oh, yeah, there have been offended people.

Offended or not, do you remember one particular reaction?

— I called a candidate to offer him the prize, and it turned out he was a big fan. I remember he said, "I'm not surprised that I'm winning an Ig Nobel Prize. But I thought if I ever won one of these prizes, it would be for my work with sea monsters." Outside his main research, he read and wrote about monsters in travel books.

After 35 years, you're leaving the US. Why now?

— Last September, four of the ten winners decided not to come because they didn't feel comfortable traveling to the US. If you just read the news, you don't appreciate how bad things are getting here now, and they're getting worse. We've got to move it someplace else.

Have relations between scientists and the American government hit rock bottom?

— The government is being run by people who have very clearly stated that they want to destroy science. That's not a relationship.

How are your fellow scientists?

— Most of them are suffering terribly. Some of them are moving to other countries. Others have had their funding removed: it's not legal to do, but still they do it. I know scientists who can keep their laboratory open but who, the way they describe it, can't really get any science done—just keep the equipment running.

And morally?

— People are frightened. The National Institutes of Health, which was the place everybody looked to for the best advice, is now the place you look to for the worst advice: it's run by people with no background in what they're doing, who seem to care only about the flow of money. If this continues, plenty of people are going to become unhealthy and die. It's like malicious little children are running things.

Children often don't know what they're doing.

— When the children are 50 years old, and when they're making tremendous amounts of money for acting like that, they're no longer so innocent.

Is there a silver lining?

— The public is starting to appreciate that there are plenty of good scientists in the rest of the world.

And why, of all places, did you choose Zurich for the ceremony next Thursday?

— The Swiss had made it very, very clear that they would really love to have the ceremony there. And we're in the happy position that several different institutions in different countries want it. So from now on we'll hold it in Zurich every two years and, in the odd-numbered years, in a different European country. It will be a little bit like the Eurovision Song Contest.