26 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1994

test tubes can start a habit that mightleave one Òstrung out, begging for grantmoney.Ó

The awards were interrupted period-ically for Heisenberg Certainty Lectures(named for that pillar of modern phys-ics, the Heisenberg uncertainty princi-ple), delivered by the real Nobel laure-ates and other honored guests. The cer-tainty: no lecture lasts more than 30seconds, or a black-clad referee whis-tles the speaker oÝ the stage. ArtiÞcial-intelligence maven Marvin Minsky bare-ly Þnished his comments, but Lipscombwrapped up his address with plenty oftime to spare. ÒThe following statementof the Heisenberg Certainty Principle isdedicated to the U.S. Congress,Ó Lips-comb began. ÒIf your position is every-where, your momentum is zero,Ó heconcluded.

One of last yearÕs winners, HarvardUniversityÕs John Mack, had been askedto deliver the keynote address, but hebacked out. Mack won the 1993 Psychol-ogy Ig for his theory that people whobelieve they were abducted by aliensprobably were. ÒWeÕre disappointed andhurtÓ over MackÕs absence, said Ig mas-ter of ceremonies Marc Abrahams, Òbutabove all, weÕre concerned.Ó

The eveningÕs Þnal Ig, for Mathemat-ics, went to the Southern Baptist Churchof Alabama, for Òtheir county-by-coun-ty estimate of how many Alabama citi-

zens will go to hell if they donÕt repent.ÓThe Honorable Terje Korsnes, consulof Norway, accepted the Ig on behalf ofthe people of Hell, a little town in Nor-way. ÒWe have a special place in Hellfor all of you,Ó Korsnes said.

During the apr�s-Ig celebration, Min-

sky summed up his impressions of theceremony. ÒItÕs one of my principlesthat if I have a complex experience thatlasts a couple of hours, I can neverthink of any few silly words to describeit,Ó he stated. ÒSo I think itÕs bad tosummarize.Ó ÑSteve Mirsky

And the other 1994 Ig Nobel Prize winners are:

Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore. Winner of the Ig in Psy-chology for his 30-year study of the effects of negative reinforcement, name-ly, the punishing of the citizens of Singapore “whenever they spat, chewedgum, or fed pigeons.”

The Japanese Meteorological Agency. Awarded the Physics Ig Nobel “forits seven-year study of whether earthquakes are caused by catfish wigglingtheir tails.”

L. Ron Hubbard. Recipient of the Ig in Literature “for his crackling Good Book,Dianetics, which is highly profitable to mankind or to a portion thereof.”

Chile’s Juan Pablo Davila, former employee of the state-owned companyCodelco. Davila’s Ig in Economics was awarded for instructing his computerto “buy” when he meant “sell.” The ultimate consequence was the loss of 0.5percent of the gross national product. In Chile “davilar” is now a verb mean-ing “to botch things up royally.”

John Hagelin of Maharishi International University and the Institute of Sci-ence, Technology and Public Policy. Winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize “for hisexperimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percentdecrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.” —Mervin Stykes

Mark H. Skolnick of the Universi-ty of Utah and his 44 collabo-rators at Þve research facilities

had good reason to celebrate when theyfound BRCA1, a gene whose malfunc-tion accounts for nearly half of all in-herited breast cancers, or some 5 per-cent of the total. The discovery ended

one of the most widely publicized andpotentially proÞtable gene hunts todate. Once revealed, BRCA1Õs secretsmay eventually lead to better treat-ments for familial breast and ovariancancers.

But despite such promise, some ad-vocacy groups and scientists alike are

questioning how knowledge of the elu-sive gene will be applied in the inter-imÑand who stands to gain, by howmuch. These ethical and legal issues arecomplicated by the fact that BRCA1Ñastretch of chromosome 17 that is some10 times longer than the average hu-man geneÑseems far from ordinary.Unlike most other known cancer genes,which play a role in both familial andnonfamilial cancers, BRCA1 apparentlyplays no role in nonfamilial breast and

Toxic Waste and Race: An Unnatural Association

Hazardous-waste sites are too close for comfort in manyminority communities, concludes a report by the Centerfor Policy Alternatives in Washington, D.C. The recent up-date of the well-publicized 1987 study by the UnitedChurch of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, ToxicWastes and Race in the United States, found that the situa-tion has worsened during the past six years. People of col-or—defined by the report as the total population less non-Hispanic whites—are currently 47 percent more likely thanare whites to live near a commercial toxic-waste facility.

The population of neighborhoods changes according towhether there is . . .

Deciphering the Breast Cancer GeneExperts grapple with the implications of the Þnding

1980

1993

...no hazardous-waste site nearby,

one such facility,

one landfill,

more than one waste facility or a large landfill,

or three facilities, an incinerator or a large landfill.

RESIDENTS WHO ARE PEOPLE OF COLOR (PERCENT)0 10 20 30 40 50

Copyright 1994 Scientific American, Inc.