The hype over last month's supposed Maya doomsday has won honors as the weirdest science story of the past year — and although there wasn't all that much science to the claim that the ancient culture's calendar foretold the end of the world, the whole episode was a classic example of people putting too much faith in way-out calculations.
"A year before that, we gave one of our prizes to a whole bunch of people who made specific prediction about when the world would end," said Marc Abrahams, who heads up the Ig Nobel Prize program for silly science. The big lesson? "When you make mathematical calculations, you should check your assumptions," Abrahams told me.
Abrahams and I sifted through the scientific silliness of the past year, including the Maya non-apocalypse, tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong talk show on BlogTalkRadio online and in the Second Life virtual world. If you missed the live webcast, don't worry: You can catch up with the podcast by checking out the archive on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes.
How did the hubbub surrounding the Maya calendar get started? It began decades ago with the suggestion that the ancient Maya may have seen the end of their 5,125-year-long cycle of creation as the opening for a cosmic Armageddon. Although archaeologists have shot down that hypothesis, the idea persisted — and got mixed up with other end-of-the-world ideas.
Abrahams suspects that the idea got a push from folks who could profit from a little doomsday buzz: "Some people made money on it — especially people who wrote books about it or made TV shows about it. The prediction certainly did have monetary value for a few people."
The Internet served a dual role in all this: The bad thing about the Internet is that it's easy for someone to make a way-out claim in some dark corner of the Web — whether we're talking about ancient calendars or alien-looking space blobs. The good thing is that there are lots of knowledgeable sources willing to do a reality check on remarkable claims. That applies not only to doomsday myths, but also to more strictly scientific issues such as the potential for arsenic-based life or the existence of extraterrestrial microbes.
"When some piece of news gets out there about scientific discoveries, almost always that's the start of some long messy conversation between lots and lots of people," Abrahams observed. "They're almost immediately looking things up and arguing about something they actually saw, rather than something they heard tenth-hand. That's something new for the world. There's a lot of nonsense that gets shot down a lot earlier than it did before."
Some of the other stories that made the top-10 list for the 2013 Weird Science Awards may sound almost nonsensical — but for the most part, they're way more substantive. That's the key indicator for the kind of scientific silliness that Abrahams is interested in for the Ig Nobels: "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." Take a look at the list, then tune in "Virtually Speaking Science" for a few laughs — and maybe a few deep thoughts as well:
2013 Weirdie winners:
- Maya apocalypse fizzles out
- Sex-starved flies drown woes in alcohol
- Bizarre fish has penis on its head
- Is reality 'unreal'? Scientists aim to find out
- DNA report claims that Bigfoot is part human
- Scientists make brain cells from urine
- Zoo chimp devises elaborate plots to attack humans
- 'Alien'-like skulls unearthed in ancient cemetery
- Bizarre turtles pee from their mouths
- Help out researchers: Send them your poop
Still more weird science:
- Check out all 30 nominees for the 2013 Weirdies
- 10 weirdest animal discoveries of 2012
- 10 stories that made us blush in 2012
- A dozen obvious findings for 2012
- 2012 Weird Science Awards
- 2011 Weird Science Awards
- 2010 Weird Science Awards
- 2009 Weird Science Awards
- 2008 Weird Science Awards
More podcasts from 'Virtually Speaking Science':
- Paul Doherty on the Curiosity mission and the year in science
- Shawn Lawrence Otto on the election and the climate issue
- Sean Carroll on what lies beyond the Higgs boson
- Alan Stern on the Uwingu mystery space venture
- George Djorgovski on the future of immersive virtual reality
- JPL's Dave Beaty previews Curiosity's mission on Mars
- SETI Institute's Seth Shostak about aliens and UFOs
- Paul Doherty on solar eclipses and the transit of Venus
- Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto on spaceflight and Yuri's Night
- JPL's Dave Beaty on the search for life on Mars
- Shawn Lawrence Otto on science and politics
- Ig Nobel impresario Marc Abrahams on silly science
- Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin on Mars exploration
- Propulsion expert Marc Millis on interstellar spaceflight
- Sean Carroll on the puzzling frontiers of physics
- Rand Simberg on the private-enterprise vision for spaceflight
- Martin Hoffert on the future of energy policy
- George Djorgovski on science in virtual worlds
- Alan Stern on suborbital research and NASA's mission to Pluto
- Col. 'Coyote' Smith on the outlook for space solar power
- Tim Pickens on rocket ventures and the Google Lunar X Prize
"Virtually Speaking Science" is hosted in Second Life by the Exploratorium. Theoretical physicists Sean Carroll and Matt Strassler will be my guests on Feb. 6 for a show about the frontiers of physics.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.