The Ig Nobel Prizes ( http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html ) "honor individuals whose achievements 'cannot or should not be reproduced'. Ten prizes are given to people who have done remarkably goofy things -- some of them admirable, some perhaps otherwise."

Previous winners include "Bernard Vonnegut (...) for his revealing report, "Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed. (...) Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples (...) Jacques Benveniste, for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet. (...)" among others.

The best (?) thing about the IG Nobel Prize is, all those achievements are true - and they give the references. The Ig Nobel Prize is one of those rare awards ceremony that everybody loves - except the ones who are thus "honored".

PS: Try to guess who won the 1999 Prize for Sciences of Education ...?