CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- In a spoof on the coveted Nobel Prizes, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology awarded the 'Ig Nobel Peace Prize' Thursday to the Pepsi-Cola Co. of the Phillipines.

The company was cited for sponsoring a contest to create a millionaire, and then announcing the wrong winning number, which incited and united 800,000 expectant winners, 'bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their nation's history.'


Other 1993 Ig Nobel winners include:

-- Literature: to E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P.W. Armstrong and their 972 co-authors for publishing a medical research paper that has 10 times as many authors as pages.

-- Phychology: John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University for their 'leaping conclusion' that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space, probably were.

-- Paul Williams Jr. of Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth W. Newell of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, for their pioneering study, 'Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs.'

-- Visionary Technology: To Jay Schiffman of Farmington Hills, Michigan, for inventing image projection device that makes it possible to drive a car and watch television at the same time, and to the Michigan Legislature for making it legal to do so.

-- James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, for inventing scent strips, by which perfume is applied to magazine pages.

-- Physics: Louis Kervran of France, for concluding that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion.

-- Medicine: James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands Jr., for painstaking research report, 'Acute Management of the Zipper- Entrapped Penis.'

The awards are sponsored by MIT's Journal of Irreproducible Results and recognize men and women 'whose achievements cannot or should not be reproduced.'