A U of T professor is fêted (well, sort of) at Harvard for his study about seeing Jesus in toast

Professor Kang Lee was part of the Chinese-Canadian research coalition behind “Seeing Jesus in toast,” one of several studies honoured at Thursday’s Ig Nobel Prize awards, an annual Nobel Prize parody hosted by Harvard University and produced by “science humour” magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Lee’s study examined the physiological basis for people’s propensity to spot the messiah’s mug on their breakfast burrito, or Kate Middleton’s face on a jellybean. (Lee’s study concludes that humans are basically wired to interpret faces wherever there’s even the tiniest hint of face-iness.) According to the Globe, Lee’s fellow honourees included scientists exploring the slipperiness of banana peels, the effectiveness of shoving pork up one’s nostrils to mitigate nosebleeds and the reactions of reindeer to humans dressed up in polar bear suits.