This year's Ig Nobel Prizes have recently been announced. The Chemistry Prize winner one is perhaps my favorite among this year's selections:

Teenagers, do not take heed: Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide. Sharee A. Umpierre, Deborah Anderson and Joseph Hill mixed four different types of Coke with sperm (in test tubes, mind you), and found that Diet Coke is the most lethal sperm killer. No sperm was left standing after its wrath. New Coke wasn't so deadly: it destroyed only 59 percent of sperm. Again, we can' emphasize this enough: teenagers, don't not try this in real life.

I have always wondered why New Coke was such a dismal marketing failure despite the fact that blind taste tests showed that most consumers preferred it to "classic" Coke. This important new research provides a possible solution to the longstanding conundrum. Maybe taste wasn't the only relevant consideration for consumers!