The Shnobel Prize, a satirical award for scientific achievement, will be presented in Europe for the first time, not in the United States. The 36th ceremony will be held on September 3, 2026, in Zurich, Switzerland.
This is reported by The Guardian.
The Shnobel (or Ignobel) Prize is a satirical scientific award given for research that “first makes you laugh and then makes you think.” It was founded by Mark Abrahams in conjunction with the humorous journal Annals of Improbable Research.
The ceremony is usually held in the United States in September, a few weeks before the Nobel Prizes are announced. In previous years, it has been held at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Boston University.
The decision to postpone the ceremony is linked to Donald Trump's tough immigration policies . According to Abrahams, it has become unsafe to visit the country over the past year. He noted that the organizers cannot “in good conscience ask new laureates or international journalists to travel to the United States this year.”
Therefore, this time the organizers plan to hold the ceremony in Zurich, and return here every two years.
“Switzerland has given the world many unexpectedly useful things — Albert Einstein's physics, the global economy, and the zozule clock come to mind — and it is helping the world appreciate incredible people and ideas once again,” Abrahams said.
In between ceremonies, it will be moved to other European cities. There are currently no plans to return the event to the United States.
Last year, four of the ten laureates decided not to travel to the ceremony in Boston.
The laureates then included researchers from Japan who tested whether painting cows zebra-like helps protect them from fly bites. Another team from Africa and Europe studied what kind of pizza lizards like to eat the most. Also awarded were European researchers who found that alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak a foreign language, and a scientist who spent decades studying nail growth.