Author: Saul Justin Newman, Research Fellow, Centre For Longitudinal Studies, UCL

From the swimming habits of dead trout to the revelation that some mammals can breathe through their backsides, a group of leading leftfield scientists have been taking their bows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the 34th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Not to be confused with the actual Nobel prizes, the Ig Nobels recognise scientific discoveries that “make people laugh, then think”. We caught up with one of this year’s winners, Saul Justin Newman, a senior research fellow at the University College London Centre for Longitudinal Studies. His research finds that most of the claims about people living…