Makes you laugh (but then...)

Beards and other studies. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Kudos to Kate for bringing the subject of today’s newsletter to my attention: the 2021 Ig Nobel Prizes.

“The what?” you might ask, if you were like me up until a few days ago, and have never heard of these awards.

They’re the annual prizes awarded by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, intended to celebrate research that makes you laugh—but then make you think.

What kinds of research? Well, let’s start with a subject that’s been near and dear to my heart since I stopped shaving at the start of the pandemic: an experiment suggesting that men may have evolved beards to avoid being punched in the face.

University of Utah scientists Ethan Beseris, Steven Naleway, and David Carrier created simulations of human faces with and without beards, then researched how much damage they endured after dropping weights on them.

Yes, it sounds like something I would have enjoyed trying in third grade, but the experiments actually resulted in a published paper in the journal Integrativ…