The Brewing Crisis in Science: Federal agencies are funding research on baby-naming rather than the field’s Next Big Thing
From 1975 to 1987, Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) presented monthly “Golden Fleece Awards” to identify what he viewed as wasteful government spending. Since then, many politicians and other critics of federal spending have criticized various government-funded research projects.
Some of these criticisms clearly have been wrong-headed. An example is this dismissal of a supposedly unworthy research project by former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin: “Sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”
The problem is that Palin doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. A century of studies on the genetics of Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, an organism that shares about half of its genes with humans, has yielded information critical to understanding how genes work and the process of ageing.
In order to call attention to this sort of misapprehension, several congressmen from both sides of the aisle have gotten together with various research advocacy organizations to create the “Golden Goose Awards” to “highlight the often unexpected or serendipitous nature of basic scientific research by honoring federally funded researchers whose work may once have been viewed as unusual, odd or obscure, but has produced important discoveries benefitting society in significant ways.”