On May 10, Senator Jeff Flake arrived in the US Senate Press Gallery with cups of gummy worms and crumbled chocolate biscuit.
The worms are reference to a study criticised in his new report, Twenty Questions: Government Studies That Will Leave You Scratching Your Head. Flake’s report picks apart twenty US government-funded studies, claiming to reveal a culture of waste among scientists and three federal funding agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The question of how tax dollars are spent on research is a legitimate one, but Flake’s intent seems to be to drive press headlines rather than deliver serious criticism of science policy. As others have pointed out, this is not a new tactic for Senator Flake or US politicians. In the 1970s, Congressman William “Bill” Proxmire made regular headlines and scored points with constituents by holding the “Golden Fleece” awards to highlight wasteful federal spending, with NSF-funded research a regular winner. In more recent memory, Senator Jim Inhofe triumphantly presented a snowball to disprove climate change on the Senate floor.
Much of the criticism for specific projects in Flake’s report is overblown. The first page of the report makes this clear: “Most [of the studies] were conducted as parts of more extensive research funded with government grants or financial support. ” Yet the report reads as though entire research grants went to fund the particular studies criticised. And, as Jeffrey Mervis of Science writes, the report neglects the fact that the taxpayer funds research not just for the results but in order to train the next generation of scientists.
Yet also of concern are the contradictory messages sent about how open science should be to the broader public. On the one hand, the report makes a reasonable argument about public access to research: taxpayers pay for research so they should have an idea of where that money is going.
On the other hand, the report illustrates why some scientists have been wary of raising the visibility of their research. Most of the studies listed in Flake’s report have been published open-access and all of the researchers targeted had agreed to share their work with journalists and press outlets. In a sense, Senator Flake is penalising researchers who chose to make their findings widely available and interact with a larger public. And rather than engage with the research agenda behind the studies, the report takes experiments out of context, then dismisses them with a corny one-liner.
Take the following, for example.
A study on how alcohol affects Zebra Finch songs makes no mention of the zebra finch as one of the main model organisms through which scientists understand cognition, memory, and behaviour. Instead, the conclusion is: “Spending more on these types of bird-brained studies sounds cuckoo to taxpayers.”
In another section, research on how dogs shake when wet is said to potentially help engineers improve the efficiency of washing machines, dryers, painting devices, spin coaters and other machines. The report’s view? “This study is likely to leave taxpayers shaking their heads regardless.”
Regarding a study examining the function of hair in mammals, the report does mention the experiment’s potential application: incorporating structures similar to hair could help protect sensitive equipment. Senator Flake’s conclusion? “It is this type of hair-raising spending that has taxpayers pulling their hair out.”
Recently, David L. Hu, Principal Investigator on the two animal hair studies, responded to Twenty Questions. Hu, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, thanked the Senator and admonished himself, and the scientific establishment, for failing to “convince others of the importance of his work.”
Scientists are often argued to be poor communicators. They are not always to blame. Experiments in Twenty Questions were singled out not because they were wasteful or poorly explained. They were singled out because they were easy to make jokes about. Taxpayer funded science should not be beyond criticism, but the Flake Report fails to do so in a fair and productive manner. The public deserves better.
Nathan Tauger is a US-UK Fulbright postgraduate student at the University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. He is on Twitter as @NTauger.
