Ig Nobel Fetish

   Wall Street Journal, November 11, 1996, p. B1.


   Sorting Out This Case Could Take The Wisdom of a Learned
   Hand

   By Ross Kerber


   The value of a Nobel Prize-worthy feat is clearly
   established: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences pays
   $1.1 million to winners of the coveted awards.

   The value of Nobel Prize-worthy feet is harder to fix, but
   two of them have evidently fallen into the wrong hands.

   At an auction in Cambridge, Mass., last month, software
   engineer Nigel J. Foster says he paid $15 for a plaster
   sculpture of the left foot of Richard Roberts, a biologist
   who won the Nobel Prize in 1993. The Roberts foot now sits
   on Mr. Foster's mantel in nearby Newton.

   But another bidder, Jylene Livengood, says she paid $30 for
   the Roberts replica and is its rightful owner.

   The event was sponsored by the Annals of Improbable
   Research, which each year spoofs the Nobels with its own Ig
   Nobel awards for scientific work that "cannot or should not
   be reproduced." This year's winners include a Purdue
   University professor who invented a way to fire up a
   barbecue grill using liquid oxygen, and a University of
   Buffalo professor for proving that "financial strain is a
   risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease."

   For this year's ceremony, Annals editors convinced four
   real Nobel laureates -- Dr. Roberts, Sheldon Glashow
   (physics, 1979), Dudley Herschbach (chemistry 1986) and
   William Lipscomb (chemistry 1976) to sit for castings of
   their feet, to be auctioned to raise money for science
   programs.

   Mr. Foster concedes he may have bid on another foot. But he
   says he noticed the sculptures being carried off by parties
   unknown, and grabbed the last one -- the Roberts foot --
   before it got away.

   When Ms. Livengood went to claim her prize, all the feet
   were gone. Her appeals to Mr. Foster have been in vain.
   "Let's face it, there aren't too many people on the planet
   with one of these," he says.

   The Annals has been unable to sort out the mess. It didn't
   take winning bidders' names, and doesn't know what became
   of the Glashow or the Lipscomb feet. (The Herschbach foot
   has been accounted for.)

   The group has posted this notice on its Web site: "If you
   purchased one of the feet, please get in touch with us, so
   that we may rectify this embarrassing misstep."

   For his part, Dr. Roberts says he's not worried about the
   foot's ownership. He's surprised it fetched any price at
   all. Of Mr. Foster, Dr. Roberts says, "I think he
   overpaid."

   [End]