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Mosquito gets Ig-Nobel

By dmunger on October 6, 2006.

So psychologists got shut out of the Nobels this year ... so what! This year the peace prize at the Ig-Nobels went to a discovery of a psychological phenomenon: how to get rid of teenagers. That's right, the "teen repellent" is this year's winner of the Ig-Nobels' biggest prize.

As we have reported on CogDaily, already this useful technology has proven to have other important applications, such as alerting teens to important IMs without getting caught by geriatric teachers.

Seriously, though -- the last psychological Nobel was split among three researchers in 2000: Arvid Carlsson, for work on Dopamine, Paul Greengard, for work on neurotransmitters, and Eric Kandel, for the molecular basis of memory. What psychology research do you think merits the Nobel medical prize? Let us know in the comments.

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I would give a "memory" Nobel prize to Brenda Milner, Alan Baddeley, Elizabeth Loftus and Endel Tulving.

A psychotherapy award to Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck.

Albert Bandura.

Paul Ekman.

By Denis Côté (not verified) on 06 Oct 2006 #permalink

If the sound system is any good, i can hear the 'teen repellent' noise. There are department stores that use 'ultrasonic' security systems that i've always found so annoying, that i don't go to those places. When i was a teen, my hearing was checked up to about 40Khz. That was the limit of the test. In those days, i didn't like dog whistles. The point is that in any population, for any trait, you are going to get a bell curve response. Someone is going to be at one end, and someone else is going to be at the other end.