Swiss scientist ‘delighted’ at Ig Nobel win for research on pedestrian habits

A Swiss researcher working in Japan is the co-winner of the humourous Ig Nobel Prize , for a research looking at why pedestrians run into each other. Claudio Feliciani says it’s an honour to have won (really!) and explains what he found out from studying collisions at crosswalks. Science is not always serious. Every now and then it can make you laugh, and then reflect. This is the principle to which the United-States-based scientific and humorous journal Improbable Research adheres every year to select the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize, awarded to the most bizarre scientific, technical and medical achievements, based either on the research methodology or on the results obtained. In 1995, the Ig Nobel for psychology was awarded to a group of Japanese scientists for their success in teaching pigeons to distinguish between Picasso and Monet paintings. Last year, Zimbabwe's ten-trillion-dollar prize (worth just a few Swiss francs) went to a group of researchers who sought a...