I mentioned the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at America’s Harvard University a month or so ago and I have since been inundated by a letter reminding me that I forgot to announce the winners.

I stand corrected (struggles to feet and stands corrected.)

The winners, all scientists, were honoured for research results that “first made people LAUGH and then made them THINK”.

The awards were presented in front of 1 200 spectators in an atmosphere filled with paper aeroplanes which are traditionally flung about during the proceedings while an eminent professor patiently sweeps them from the stage.

The Ig Nobel prizes were physically handed to the winners by seven genuine Nobel laureates and the event was produced by the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research.

Each winner was permitted 60 seconds to deliver an acceptance speech – the time limit being enforced by a cute-but-implacable eight-year-old girl with a voice that shatters glass.

This year’s Physiology Prize went to a team that found No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.

The Medicine Prize went to researchers who demonstrated that people make better decisions about some kinds of things – but worse decisions about other kinds of things – when they have a strong urge to urinate.

The Biology Prize went to a team who discovered that a certain kind of Australian beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle: Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids mistake stubbies for females (Coleoptera)”.

The Peace Prize went to the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank.

I am surprised that an Ig Nobel Prize has never been awarded to an anonymous fellow who finds things in his back garden – like a buried dog’s bone – and sends them to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington labelled with a scientific name and insisting they are archaeological finds.

The Smithsonian curator of antiquities, Harvey Rowe, wrote to him:

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labelled “93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothes line post… Hominid skull”.

We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County.

Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie Doll.

It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loath to come to contradiction with your findings.

But there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is about 9cm3, well below the threshold of even the earliest proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated.

Sadly, we must also deny your request of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino.

I fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy but was voted down because the species’ name you selected was hyphenated, and didn’t sound as if it might be Latin.