This year's winner of Ig Nobel prize in medicine (those are the alternative prizes given for wackiest discovery):

The winner of the Ig Nobel prize in medicine was Francis Fesmire, of University Hospital in Florida, for a study that showed that intractable hiccups can be terminated by "digital rectal massage".

"Initially, gagging and tongue pulling manoeuvres were attempted with no change in symptomatology," Dr Fesmire wrote in a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. "Digital rectal massage was then attempted using a slow circumferential motion. The frequency of hiccups immediately began to slow, with a termination of all hiccups within 30 seconds," the valiant scientist found.

As if getting checked for a hernia weren't bad enough.  H/T to Sam.