I like this. It’s an opportunity for unpopular science to shed light on things we might not otherwise talk about. The research on blue zones is all fraud or records error. Ducks are rapacious little fuckers. This topics are not pleasant, but they’re real science. Our understanding gets advanced, errors in thinking get corrected.

Science is one of the rare structure of knowledge which includes self correction by default. But correction and reputation don’t play nicely together. For correction to occur somebody had to be wrong. In some cases a lot of people.

Having a prize like this lets us elevate previously embarrassing findings, take the whole thing less seriously and make room for ideas outside the status quo.

I’m not sure this prize is any less important than the Nobel prize.

I credit the Ig Nobels for alerting me of the "blue zone" myth.

For people who don't know, it was about research related to communities around the world that are known to have a high number of centenarians. Lots of researchers have studied those populations to see how their genes/lifestyles are different from ordinary folks and try to take lessons from them.

Then one researcher came along and showed that most/all of those communities have poor record keeping, and it's quite possible they didn't have as many centenarians as claimed. What's more, for the folks in those communities where the records are reliable, the average lifespan is actually average or even below average.

One example: I think it was Okinawa - most of the records were destroyed due to heavy bombing in WW2. So we just had people's own claims of their age.