Fun science: How the research that wins the Ig Nobel Prize makes us laugh before teaching us

Sunlight spills intrusively into your room, filtered through the curtains that never quite hang right – no matter how many times you’ve tried to fix them. You blame the previous tenants for their reckless drilling. You roll over in bed wondering if the pain in your neck is a new one. Your crumpled bedsheets, evidence of a night spent tossing and turning, wilt stubbornly down the bottom left corner of the bed, revealing a maroon mattress. Overhead, the spider you’ve come to know and love as a brother stands in his dusty web, a silent, supportive observer.

Your peeling wired earphones are still plugged into your phone, a tangled hopeless mess that explains the string of calls and alarms you managed to sleep through. It’s a familiar scene that would be congenial if it were happening to anyone else.

You groggily make your way to the kitchen, deciding that today will be a breakfast of whatever is left in your fridge. Buttered toast and expired cornflakes it is. The toast, made on an inherited frying pan, slips from your hand as you butter it, landing, predictably, butter-side down. With a sigh, you clean up the splotch of crumbs and butter and by...

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