[jfcoa]

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.

[giantg2]

It's hard to believe it's not satirical...

"Ig Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her invention (a brassiere that can quickly convert into a pair of protective face masks)"

[jfcoa]

Yes, it is definitely satirical. But isn't specifically for "trivial", it gets deployed in different ways.

Some of the awards are straight up criticism of the research, like for bunk homeopathy stuff. It was awarded for the prank paper used in the Sokal affair, in which it's definitely praise of what Sokal did. Sometimes it is awarded for a bizarre but funny thing from something being studied in another more serious context like the magnetic frog levitation paper.