Ignobel (1): dressing for success

The IgNobel prizes have honoured a diverse range of ground-breaking scientific studies. The awards, presented annually for scientific research that “cannot or should not be reproduced,” are sponsored by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research (see www .improbable .com). They are handed out by genuine Nobel laureates during a tongue-in-cheek ceremony held every October.

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That “ground-breaking research” trend continued again this year, when one of the prizes went to a study of the asymmetry of the testicles found in Greek sculpture. The ancient Greeks showed a keen interest in realistic depictions of the nude male form, but it turns out that their sculptures show left testicles to be lower and larger than right ones. Evidence shows that the right testicle is usually higher and also larger than the left one, at least in right-handers.

Chris McManus of University College, London, received the 2002 IgNobel Prize for Medicine for a letter he had published in Nature in 1976. McManus, a medical student at the time, cited research showing that the right testicle tends to be higher in right-handed subjects, whereas the converse is true in left-handers.

A holiday in Italy allowed McManus to examine 107 antique sculptures. “I like going to art galleries, and it is the work of a moment to look at each [sculpture]. And in some ways, it made each gallery more interesting — would they have any more sculptures to add to the collection?” explains McManus.

He discovered that in most sculptures the right testicle was higher, but the left (lower) testicle was larger. McManus doesn't know why ancient sculptors were dressing to the left, as it were, but speculates that it may be symbolic. The Greeks believed that the right side was associated with the male and the left side with the female — male children were thought to come from the right (higher) testis and female children from the left. — Carolyn Brown, Ottawa, Ont.