'Shrimp On A Treadmill': The Politics Of 'Silly' Studies
Biologist Lou Burnett was in his car when his cellphone rang recently. It was a CNN reporter, asking about the fact that his research had been featured in a new report about wasteful government spending.
That was news to Burnett, who works at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. "I was pretty irritated," he recalls.
The report, put out by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), blasted the National Science Foundation, a major government funder of research, saying it squandered taxpayer money on questionable science projects, including one pursued by Burnett and his colleagues that involved putting shrimp on a tiny treadmill.
Lawmakers and political groups like to point to government spending that seems wasteful — especially in tough economic times. And one popular target has been scientific studies that either sound silly or involve foreign countries or have to do with sex.
Looking at past examples, however, shows that there seems to be a pattern to how research gets singled out — and what happens after it's put under the spotlight.
Take the case of the "shrimp on a treadmill." Burnett says the senator's report linked that work to a half-million-dollar research grant. But that money actually went to a lot of different research that he and his colleagues did on this economically important seafood species.
The treadmills were just a small part of it, a way to measure how shrimp respond to changes in water quality. Burnett says the first treadmill was built by a colleague from scraps and was basically free, and the second was fancier and cost about $1,000. The senator's report was misleading, says Burnett, "and it suggests that much money was spent on seeing how long a shrimp can run on a treadmill, which was totally out of context."
Biologist Lou Burnett was in his car when his cellphone rang recently. It was a CNN reporter, asking about the fact that his research had been featured in a new report about wasteful government spending.
That was news to Burnett, who works at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. "I was pretty irritated," he recalls.
The report, put out by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), blasted the National Science Foundation, a major government funder of research, saying it squandered taxpayer money on questionable science projects, including one pursued by Burnett and his colleagues that involved putting shrimp on a tiny treadmill.
Lawmakers and political groups like to point to government spending that seems wasteful — especially in tough economic times. And one popular target has been scientific studies that either sound silly or involve foreign countries or have to do with sex.
Looking at past examples, however, shows that there seems to be a pattern to how research gets singled out — and what happens after it's put under the spotlight.
Take the case of the "shrimp on a treadmill." Burnett says the senator's report linked that work to a half-million-dollar research grant. But that money actually went to a lot of different research that he and his colleagues did on this economically important seafood species.
The treadmills were just a small part of it, a way to measure how shrimp respond to changes in water quality. Burnett says the first treadmill was built by a colleague from scraps and was basically free, and the second was fancier and cost about $1,000. The senator's report was misleading, says Burnett, "and it suggests that much money was spent on seeing how long a shrimp can run on a treadmill, which was totally out of context."
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