The prize, presented on September 3 in Zurich, went to Ilona Croy, Tomasz Frackowiak, Thomas Hummel and Agnieszka Sorokowska for a questionnaire study finding that parents consistently rate the smell of babies as pleasant, while the smell of teenagers gets a far cooler reception. The underlying research, published in Chemosensory Perception, grew in part out of work Croy carried out while a postdoctoral researcher in Gothenburg and later an Associate Senior Lecturer at Linköping University, before she returned to Germany.

The Ig Nobel Prizes, organised by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, are awarded each year “for achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Ten prizes were handed out this year across categories including biomechanics, chemistry, physics and biology, with recipients including a Brazilian-led team honoured for gently provoking venomous snakes to learn what makes them bite, and a Japanese otorhinolaryngologist posthumously recognised for a 1977 study on the optimal technique for blowing one’s nose.

This year’s ceremony broke with 35 years of tradition by moving from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Zurich’s Kongresshaus, a shift organisers attributed to safety concerns for international winners and journalists travelling to the US. The 1,500-strong audience kept the ceremony’s usual rituals intact, including a shower of paper airplanes and acceptance speeches capped at 60 seconds.