Science Stupidity
Why do we waste millions to find out why a bee’s butt is bigger than it’s head? Or, why do we need to know that a certain kind of flower can make a wasp orgasm? Is this really necessary?
Have you ever wondered where our benevolent government spends all your tax dollars? Let me give you a few fun and, oh so educational, examples from the news lately:
Male wasps make love to orchids
Inbred male mice can’t get lucky
These articles are just so stupid, they practically speak for themselves. I know I was speechless.
myrmecos said,
May 11, 2008 at 10:04 am
I know these sorts of research expenditures sound wasteful, but science spending over the long run returns much more to the economy than is spent on it. In fact, it is one of the few government investments that pays for itself.
An example. Our government in the 1970s was funding biologists to study obscure bacteria that live in the Yellowstone hot springs. At the time there was not a hint that these little bacteria would relevant to anything. They were just a curiosity. But it turns out that the enzymes these bacteria use for handling DNA are unique in a very useful way. The entire multi-billion dollar biotech industry has been built around these enzymes, as has all the activity associated with DNA paternity testing and forensics. For a few thousand dollars, basic science spending created an entire new economic sector.
The problems is, we never really know ahead of time which sort of obscure studies are going to pay off in the long term, so we have to cover broad areas. It’s easy to poke fun at it, but research is more economically justified than many of the things our government spends money on.