Digging Up Clues
Scientists needed help with a big job. They asked people all over the world to bury underwear in the dirt.
The underwear was cotton, just like some of the shirts you wear. People buried it in gardens and fields, then waited two whole months.
When they dug the underwear back up, some pairs had holes and rips. Some looked almost new.
Dirt full of tiny bugs and helpers eats up cotton fast. That means the dirt is strong and healthy.
The scientists won a funny prize for their smart idea. Now teachers and farmers can bury underwear too, to check their own dirt.
The Underwear That Became a Science Tool
A team of scientists in Switzerland had an unusual idea. They wanted to find a cheap and easy way to check if soil is healthy.
So they started a citizen science project, which means everyday volunteers helped with the real research. More than 1,000 people buried plain cotton underwear in their yards, farms, and fields.
After two months in the ground, the volunteers dug the underwear up and sent it back. Cotton breaks down fastest in soil that is full of busy bacteria and fungi.
The stretchy elastic waistband almost never breaks down, so it worked like a marker, letting scientists compare each pair fairly. Soil with the most decomposed underwear was the healthiest soil.
This clever method earned the team a 2026 Ig Nobel Prize, an award that celebrates science that makes people laugh, then makes them think.
Proof by Underpants: Soil Science Gets Silly and Smart
Researchers from the University of Zurich and Agroscope wanted a simple way to measure soil health without expensive lab equipment. Their answer became a citizen science project nicknamed "Proof by Underpants."
More than 1,000 volunteers across Switzerland buried standard, all-cotton underwear in gardens, farms, and meadows, then left it underground for two months.
When the underwear came back out, the results told a story. Soil packed with active bacteria and fungi had broken down the cotton's cellulose quickly, leaving tattered scraps. Soil with fewer of these microorganisms left the underwear almost whole.
The elastic waistband, made from synthetic material, barely decomposed at all, giving researchers a steady baseline to compare every sample fairly. By measuring how much cotton disappeared, the team built what they call an underwear decomposition index, a simple score for soil quality that anyone can help collect.
The project's mix of humor and real data earned Pia Viviani, Franz Bender, Marcel van der Heijden, and Atlant Bieri a 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in soil science, an award that honors research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think.
How Buried Underwear Became Real Soil Science
When researchers from the University of Zurich and the Agroscope research institute needed a low cost, large scale way to monitor soil health, they turned to an unlikely tool: everyday cotton underwear.
Their citizen science project, known as "Proof by Underpants," recruited more than 1,000 volunteers who buried standard underpants in gardens, farms, and meadows across Switzerland and beyond, part of a broader burial effort that ultimately spanned more than 25 countries.
After two months underground, the true test began. Healthy soil ecosystems, rich in bacteria and fungi, break down cotton's cellulose relatively quickly, leaving fabric shredded or gone entirely. Soil with a thinner community of microorganisms leaves the same fabric largely intact.
Because the underwear's synthetic elastic waistband resists decomposition almost completely, it functioned as a built in control, letting researchers compare decay rates fairly across wildly different soil samples. The result was an underwear decomposition index, a low cost proxy measurement for soil biodiversity that does not require a laboratory.
In September 2026, the team, Pia Viviani, Franz Bender, Marcel van der Heijden, and Atlant Bieri, received the Ig Nobel Prize in soil science, an award from the Annals of Improbable Research that recognizes studies that seem funny at first, then turn out to matter.
Beneath the jokes about buried underwear is a serious point: soil health is difficult and expensive to measure at scale, and inviting the public to help collect data is one practical way scientists are trying to close that gap.