The federal government is ready to pay people $45,900 to attend an
annual snowmobile competition in Michigan for the next two years.
They're also ready to shell out $516,000 for scientists to develop an
ecoATM that will give out cash in exchange for old cell phones and
other electronics. And why not drop another $349,862 for a study that
looks at the effects of meditation and self-reflection for math, science
and engineering majors?
These are just a few of the 164 grants the National Science
Foundation approved two weeks ago. Yet around the same time, the
administration was warning that the sequester would cut into critical
research on chronic diseases.
While some of the less critical grant ideas were scrapped as the NSF
looked for ways to scale back and prioritize, the number of allegedly
frivolous grants still in play is not sitting well with Sen. Tom Coburn
of Oklahoma.
The GOP senator has been on a campaign to call out what he sees as
pockets of wasteful government spending. Since the sequestration took
effect March 1, he's sent 11 letters to various department heads
highlighting places where they can fiscally trim down.
In a letter to NSF director Subra Suresh, Coburn suggested cutting
the grants above along with nine others, including a $515,468 grant
used, in part, to study how a shrimp running on a treadmill responds to alterations in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.
"These may be interesting questions to ponder or explore, but just
because each is currently being supported by NSF should not mean
guaranteed future funding if new applications with greater merit or
potential are submitted," Coburn wrote in his March 12 letter. "I
appreciate your agency's commitment to continuing grants, but ensuring
the most promising new research can be supported next year may require
ending or reducing spending on lower priority grants now being funded.
Robo-squirrel may have survived its encounters with the rattlesnake but
it may have met its match in sequestration if we hope to provide support
for more promising scientific projects."
"Robo-squirrel" has long been criticized
by Coburn as a big government boondoggle. Researchers at San Diego
State University used funds from a $325,000 grant provided by the
government-bankrolled NSF to invent a robotic squirrel used for
researchers. Coburn has used robo-squirrel as an example multiple times
as a government program that needs to be cut.
NSF spokeswoman Dana Topousis told FoxNews.com Friday that they
receive 40,000 to 50,000 proposals a year. Of those, 10,000 to 11,000
get funded. Topousis says decisions are based on two criteria –
“intellectual merit” and the “broader impacts”, which addresses the
benefits of the proposed study to society.
She also says Coburn shouldn’t get caught up with the quirky names of
the projects but try to see beyond it. One of the most successful
projects the NSF has had a hand in was one in 1996 called “BackRub,” a
search engine research project by Stanford University students Larry
Page and Sergey Brin.
“BackRub sounds ridiculous but if we didn’t take a chance on it things would be a lot different today,” she said.
In 1997, BackRub changed its name to Google.
Still, others argue that a few success stories don't make it ok for
the NSF to spend taxpayer money. Shortly before the sequester took
effect, the administration warned that up to 12,000 scientists and
students could be impacted by the cuts due to reduced NSF research
grants. The administration also warned about cutbacks at the National
Institutes of Health, which "would delay progress on the prevention of
debilitating chronic conditions ... and delay development of more
effective treatments for common and rare diseases affecting millions of
Americans."
But Coburn, among those who say the administration is taking
unnecessary measures to comply with the sequester, says there are plenty
of other ways to save.
Another program Coburn calls out is "Snooki" -- a robot bird that impersonates a female sage grouse to examine the importance of courtship tactics of males.
"Every dollar spent on projects such as these could have instead
supported research to design a next-generation robotic limb to treat
injured war heroes or a life-saving hurricane detection system," Coburn
writes in his letter.
Coburn said the number of new research grants could be reduced by as many as 1,000.
Through audits and investigations, the NSF Inspector General
identified more than $309 million in questionable and poorly spent funds
in just the second half of fiscal year 2012.