Photo bombs, candid camera mishaps, and dumb ideas which seemed great at the time.  
​Here's some of the big winners in these losing categories.  

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​Being Too Edgy on Penn & Teller

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The World's funniest magicians did a show about fast food and wanted us to help.  Hey, what could go wrong?
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It didn't quite create a scandal, but I was told it was too edgy.  
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OK, but it's still fun to watch (PG-13).

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​"Never work with children or animals"
-- W.C. Fields

Precision Photo Bombing

For Professional Hotdog Eaters Only

Precision photo bombing saved this "we only have time for one take" video. 

Eating competitions are weird. Why do people do them, and who wins? Action's at t 1:10 and the Spaghetti Western showdown is at 1:40.

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​As the great David St. Hubbins reminds us in Spinal Tap,

​"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

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The Undercover Dinner Party -- How to Lose Friends 

After filming for a day in the Lab, this producer asked if our discoveries work in "real life."  

To prove they do, we had an impromptu dinner party at our house that night.  

​We invited friends over to eat, and we invited him over to film. Dinner starts at 0:45.

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Crazy Compilations About What to Do and What to Not Do 

Things to Not Try at Home

Things to Try at Home (starting at 2:10)

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​Harvard's 2007 IgNobel Prize Award . . .

 Every year the IgNobel Prizes are awarded in Harvard's Saunder's Auditorium to 10 research projects that "Make you laugh, and then make you think."  Here's what an academic circus looks like . . .

​IgNobel Prize Acceptance Speech

 
Ode to a Soup Bowl
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Oh say can you see my soup bowl refill?
 But because it’s not empty, I keep eating still.
   
 I’ve eaten 14 ounces but little do I know,  
 There’s a tube in the bottom and I have 6 quarts to go.
   
 Some geek in a red apron just told me to stop.
 I’m starving I tell him, the soup’s still at the top.
  
 Now, when we eat with out eyes, our eyes do the cheating, 
 It’s the psychology of food, it explains “Mindless Eating.” 
   
 So if you use a bowl’s bottom to tell you you’re through, 
 You’ll find 6 quarts later that the last laugh’s on you.   

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​How Not to Make a Recruiting Video

Here's our cringe-worthy recruiting video for Summer Interns.  Instead of showing us having serious fun after a serious week of work, it showed that we are legendarily horrible at golf and that we drive golf carts like 12-year old boys drive go-carts at those "no liability" amusement parks.

Although the clip tries to pay creative homage to Apocalypse Now (0:45) and Rat Patrol, we had to film a more legit and less embarrassing recruiting video to get the real job done.

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​. . . and Now for Something Completely Different

​Some of our research isn't about food, but it's about our "Hobby Research."  The first of these was to help honor World War II veterans.  The second was to help people save energy.  The first suffers from bad B-roll.  The second suffers from super horrible acting.

The Worst B-roll Award Goes to . . . 

In 2001, WWII veterans came to hear what we learned from surveying 700 of them the prior year in our "Surveying Private Ryan" project.
​One of our TV partners thought they'd add to the event's atmosphere by having German machine gun noises in the background.
Nothing livens up a party quite like a D-Day flashback. 

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​The Worst Actor Award Goes to . . .

For a Cornell campaign to reduce energy use, I was asked to talk about Mindless Heating.  To make it fun, we thought I should do it in the persona of the professor in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Again, as the great David St. Hubbins reminds us: "It's just such a fine line between stupid and clever."

I see you tremble with antici . . . pation.

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Here's the potentially silver lining to these videos:  If they make people laugh and then think,
they might be as effective as if they were flawless to begin with.