As discussed yesterday on the program (11-3pm AM860) waste watcher, US Senator Tom Coburn, says the National Science Foundation has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on silly sounding projects such as South Pole Jello wrestling experiments and the avidly watched Shrimp on a Treadmill:
The folks over at Pacific University have been conducting research into the exercise habits of shrimp or some such thing.
Mr. Coburn’s report noted that the researchers found sick shrimp “did not perform as well and did not recover as well from exercise as healthy shrimp.”
I’m sure there’s something useful in this research and that’s exactly what Professor David Scholnick of Oregon’s Pacific University said in my discussion with him today. (interview here scroll down to TaftCasts). He says he hasn’t bothered to reach out to Coburn to disabuse him of his caricature of his experiments.
Still, Coburn has a point. Some of this stuff in his report is nonsense.
Still, Coburn has a point. Some of this stuff in his report is nonsense.
“There is little, if any, obvious scientific benefit to some NSF projects, such as a YouTube rap video, a review of event ticket prices on stubhub.com, a ‘robot hoedown and rodeo,’ or a virtual recreation of the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair,” Mr. Coburn said in a letter to taxpayers he wrote introducing the 73-page report, documented by more than 350 footnotes.
Here’s the rap video he was talking about.
I don’t foreclose the possibility that some good to mankind may have been done with some of these projects, but in an age when democrats have disemboweled Medicare–a program they claim to want to save–to help defray the costs of ObamaCare, in this time of little foolin-around money, there might be just a little room to get rid of stuff like this.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com