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Calling the…

Ig Nobel Prize committee.

Margaret Soltan, June 26, 2025 8:46PM
Posted in: march of science

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2 Responses to “Calling the…”

  1. Dmitry Says:

    I don’t understand your scorn. Nanotechnology for medicine is a real topic. Many groups and companies are working on little machines to scrub arteries of plaque or perform other targeted procedures. A paper that clears Science magazine’s peer review is highly unlikely to be Ig Nobel worthy.

    https://commonfund.nih.gov/nanomedicine (unsure if will survive the current leadership)

    https://www.embs.org/pulse/articles/the-state-of-nanorobotics-in-medicine/

    Richard Feynman’s 1959 speech “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” has inspired many in the area. It is a very tough problem, progress has been slow but steady.

    https://web.pa.msu.edu/people/yang/RFeynman_plentySpace.pdf

    “…A friend of mine (Albert R. Hibbs) suggests a very
    interesting possibility for relatively small machines. He
    says that, although it is a very wild idea, it would be
    interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon.
    You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood ves-
    sel and it goes into the heart and “looks” around. (Of
    course the information has to be fed out.) It finds out
    which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and
    slices it out. Other small machines might be permanently
    incorporated in the body to assist some inadequately-
    functioning organ…”

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    No scorn. Just noting that it sounds funny.

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