Just when you thought the federal government couldn’t sink to new lows when it came to wasting taxpayer money, along comes a report from a U.S. senator that blows that assumption out of the water.
Of all the nefarious “research” the taxpayer, via the National Institutes of Health and other federal entities, has had to fund over the years, this one might be the most ridiculous: Paying a scientist to have a bee sting him in various places to find out where it hurts the most, including his penis .
As reported by the Washington Times , that little nugget was just one of several other examples of wasteful government spending compiled by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., recently. And with a national debt approaching $20 trillion, every penny counts.
Other incredible examples of wasteful spending on so-called scientific research include:
— Paying researchers to figure out that cheerleaders look more attractive as a group rather than as individuals;
— A study concluding that Democratic women in Congress were less feminine than Republican women – research that went so far as to even identify the lawmakers who were thought to score low on the femininity scale as part of a $50,000 National Science Foundation grant to the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA).
