The National Science Foundation has an annual budget of about $7 billion. That’s a lot of money. So, what are they spending money on? Things like studying shrimp exercising on treadmills. I’m not making this up. In fact, almost half their budget is wasted.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, said he identified more than $3 billion in mismanagement at NSF, ranging from questionable studies to exorbitant operating costs, and in some cases the agency duplicates operations performed by other agencies.
At a time when the government is struggling with record deficits and bumping up against its borrowing limit, he said the agency is an example of the kinds of spending taxpayers should no longer tolerate.
“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.
In one instance, he said NSF employees, in their spare time, engaged in a jello-wrestling contest at the agency’s McMurdo research station in Antarctica. In another instance, the agency paid $559,681 to test sick shrimps’ metabolism, which one researcher said was “the first time that shrimp have been exercised on a treadmill.”
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.”
The NSF spokeswoman bragged that the person responsible for Jello wrestling was fired. But the article doesn’t include any defense of the shrimp study, the recreation of the 1964/65 World’s Fair or any of the other wasteful projects they’ve done.
Here’s a news report showing a shrimp on a treadmill. This is what we get for that $500,000. Watch for more examples of the wasteful spending in this one agency.
(Click Title for Video)
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