The science of blowing your nose

Science does not always begin with a grand frontier. Sometimes it begins with a handkerchief, an obstructed nostril and a question so ordinary that almost nobody thinks to measure it. In 1977, two physicians in Wakayama attached instruments to that question. Forty-nine years later, their numbers reached a prize stage in Zurich.

The organizers of the Ig Nobel Prizes awarded the 2026 Medicine Prize posthumously to Tokuji Unno for “How to Blow the Nose—An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing.” Unno and Hiroshi Yajima published the underlying paper in the January 1977 issue of the journal of the Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Society of Japan. The juxtaposition sounds comic. The experiment itself was methodical.

The prize found a paper from another scientific era

Unno was born in 1933, graduated from Chiba University’s medical school, and worked at Wakayama Medical University before becoming the founding professor of otorhinolaryngology at Asahikawa Medical University in October 1976. His field was respiratory physiology. He retired in 1998, became professor emeritus and died in August 2022 at 89.

The paper belonged to his Wakayama period. It lists Unno and Yajima, then both in the university’s otorhinolaryngology department, as authors. The official Ig Nobel citation, however, names Unno as the laureate. Asahikawa Medical University professor Miki Takahara—head of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery and the chair’s third professor—received the prize in Unno’s place. The university said it could not confirm current information for Yajima. This report does not infer his present status.

That precision matters because celebratory retellings tend to merge the scientist honored, the scientists who did the work and the person who stood onstage. The primary records do not.

What two pneumotachometers recorded

The researchers studied 15 males aged 14 to 48. Using two pneumotachometers in parallel, they measured the velocity, volume and duration of air expelled through each nostril and through both. A balloon catheter and pressure transducer monitored pressure changes in the external auditory canal.

The paper’s abstract reports a mean maximum expiratory velocity of 1.87 liters per second during nasal expiration and 1.81 liters per second when subjects blew through one side. A single blow averaged 1.34 liters and lasted 1.23 seconds. Across 60 one-sided trials, ear-canal pressure changed in a positive direction 31 times, a negative direction seven times, and did not change 22 times.

The figures are unusually concrete for an action people perform without thought. They are also measurements from a small 1977 physiology study—not population norms and not evidence from a modern clinical trial.

The asymmetry hidden in an ordinary act

The central observation was that the two nasal passages need not offer equal resistance. Closing the more open nostril increased velocity through the less open side. The authors therefore favored blowing one side at a time. They reasoned that higher velocity should remove secretions more effectively, and recommended a large, sustained expiration rather than a brief effort.

Asahikawa Medical University summarized the old paper as supporting four ideas: blow one nostril at a time; generate sufficient force and velocity; inhale moderately beforehand and sustain the blow; and potentially assist removal of lower-airway secretions. That summary describes what the 1977 authors concluded. It does not announce a new 2026 experiment.

A conclusion is not a modern clinical guideline

The award does not update medical advice. All 15 participants were male, the age range was limited, and the study did not test outcomes across diseases, children, postoperative patients or a representative population. Its methods predate contemporary reporting standards for clinical research. Japan.co.jp found no official announcement of an independent modern replication accompanying the prize.

The authors observed ear-canal pressure changes and reasoned that these did not ordinarily produce acute middle-ear infection. That historical conclusion should not be generalized to every patient or circumstance. Pain, bleeding, ear symptoms, infancy and postoperative care require clinical judgment beyond an awards story.

The distinction does not diminish the paper. It locates it accurately: a compact physiological investigation whose question is memorable enough to invite another look.

Why a posthumous prize matters

The 36th Ig Nobel ceremony began at 7 p.m. Central European time on September 3—2 a.m. the next day in Japan—at Zurich’s Kongresshaus. Organizers said 1,500 people attended. Nobel laureates Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Michel Mayor and Tim Hunt presented prizes; paper airplanes flew; the annual theme was “FUNGI.” A Japanese-language stream was produced with Dwango on Niconico.

The location marked a break. The organizers say the previous 35 ceremonies had all been staged in the United States, including online editions, after the first event at the MIT Museum in 1991. Zurich was the first ceremony outside the country.

Unno could not hear the applause. Yet a posthumous prize can perform a useful scholarly act: it returns attention to work that survived in the literature but slipped from public view. Because the methods, sample and numerical results were published, readers can admire the question while still testing the limits of the answer.

Counting the 20-year Japanese run carefully

The sequence begins in 2007, when Mayu Yamamoto received the Chemistry Prize for extracting vanillin from cow dung. The official winners archive then shows at least one Japanese or Japan-linked recipient in every award year through Unno’s 2026 Medicine Prize: 20 consecutive years when counted inclusively.

Calling it a “national winning streak” requires caveats. The Ig Nobels do not publish a countries table. International teams cross borders; citizenship, institutional affiliation and the country tags in a citation are not interchangeable. The defensible claim is narrower: Japanese or Japan-linked researchers have appeared among the winners every year from 2007 to 2026.

The list is not bound by a single discipline. It moves from chemistry to crowd physics, industrial design, taste, physiology, animal science and medicine. Its continuity lies less in subject matter than in a willingness to make the apparently ridiculous testable.

The Ig Nobel’s serious bargain with laughter

The prizes are organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, not by the Nobel Foundation. Ten are awarded each year for achievements that “first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK.” The organizers say the purpose is to celebrate the unusual, honor imagination and stimulate interest in science, medicine and technology.

The process is playful but not accidental. According to the organizers, a typical year brings about 10,000 nominations. Candidates are contacted in advance and may decline. Unselected nominations can be considered again. The ceremony has been webcast since 1995, combining deliberate absurdity with researchers explaining real work.

Laughter here is an opening reaction, not necessarily a verdict that the science is worthless. The organizers explicitly say achievements may be good or bad while still provoking thought. Conversely, an Ig Nobel is not peer review repeated at a higher level; it does not certify that every conclusion is correct or important. The prize asks audiences to look twice.

Curiosity before prestige

Japan.co.jp’s analysis is that the most meaningful part of the 20-year sequence is not an imagined national talent for eccentricity. The selection deliberations are private, nomination patterns can be uneven, and visibility in science communication may shape which work gets noticed. No primary source demonstrates that a cultural trait caused the run.

What the record does reveal is a durable archive of researchers willing to quantify neglected corners of experience. A question about nose blowing can appear trivial beside cancer biology or planetary science. But scientific method does not require a subject to look prestigious before it is measured. It requires a question clear enough to test, methods clear enough to inspect and claims limited by the evidence.

Unno and Yajima’s paper lasted 49 years before an improbable prize illuminated it. Its sample remains small. Its conclusions remain historical. Yet the experiment still performs its essential work: it makes a familiar second of human behavior newly visible—and leaves readers wondering what else passes every day without anyone thinking to measure it.