Michigan doctors who used cured pork to stop a nosebleed won a 2014 Ig Nobel prize, awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine at Harvard University for especially imaginative scientific achievements.
Dr. Sonal Saraiya and her team at the Detroit Medical Center decided to try the folk remedy as a “last resort” after failed attempts to stop an uncontrollable nosebleed in a 4-year-old who suffers from Glanzmann thrombasthenia, a rare condition in which blood does not properly clot. They stuffed strips of cured pork into the child’s nostrils twice, and the hemorrhaging ceased.
Why did it work? “There are some clotting factors in the pork,” she said, the Associated Press reports, “and the high level of salt will pull in a lot of fluid from the nose.”
The awards also recognized researchers who explored whether owning a cat is bad for your mental health (it might be), Japanese scientists who studied whether banana peels are actually slippery (they’re not), and Norwegian biologists who set out to discover if people dressed like polar bears could scare reindeers (they can).
- The Fall of Roe and the Failure of the Feminist Industrial Complex
- What Trump Knew About January 6
- Follow the Algae Brick Road to Plant-Based Buildings
- The Education of Glenn Youngkin
- The Benefits and Challenges of Cutting Back on Meat
- Here's Everything New on Netflix in July 2022—and What's Leaving
- Women in Northern Ireland Still Struggle to Access Abortion More Than 2 Years After Decriminalization
