Comment by giantg2

The Ig Nobel is not for trivial achievements, it is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." This takes different forms.

The part of the wikipedia article you are referencing is an inference from a particular article: "A September 2009 article in The National titled "A noble side to Ig Nobels" says that, although the Ig Nobel Awards are veiled criticism of trivial research, history shows that trivial research sometimes leads to important breakthroughs."

The definition of "blue zones" never had anything to do with average longevity. The entire concept is predicated on unusual numbers of centenarians, not long average life spans. In fact, as is pointed out in the Ig Nobel winning paper, Blue Zone places like Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria have always been paradoxical: they are supposed to have higher numbers of unusually long lived people, but have shorter average lifespans than the rest of their countries. The paradox goes away with the finding that the count of centenarians is incorrect. There's nothing left to the Blue Zone concept without the centenarians.

What topic are you suggesting to search on Pubmed? I have yet to see anything that supports some places have places with exceptionally long lived people. Especially to the massive outlier values that is often put forth. (So, 105 is not that crazy of a number to consider. 110, however, already starts to stretch credibility quite heavily.)

(Leaving discussion of the ignobel to the other thread.)