The Feds are spending your tax dollars on million-dollar grants to study sex habits of mud snails

Monday, April 08, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: tax dollars, scientific research, snails

(NaturalNews) Another irritating example of government waste at its most absurd, the taxpayer-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) has reportedly awarded a sizable grant to researchers at the University of Iowa to study the reproduction habits of New Zealand mud snails. According to Breitbart, more than half-a-million taxpayer dollars has already been spent on the research, and another half-million will likely follow before the study is eventually completed.

An obvious jab at the male segment of the population, the stated aim of the study is to figure out why organisms in general reproduce sexually when it is possible and less "costly" for some species to reproduce asexually, or at least hermaphroditically as in the case of New Zealand mud snails. But the study does not even mention the fact that snails are actually hermaphrodites -- it instead tries to use their unusual mating habits as a platform to advance the notion that the world would be a better place if women did not need men to reproduce.

"The implication is that if the study can prove that there is no benefit to sexual reproduction, then an organisms should simply reproduce asexually without a mate," writes William Bigelow for Breitbart. "The press release from the University of Iowa tipped the hand of the study by asserting that the slower rate of reproduction by sexual reproduction was 'the cost of males,' that female organisms could conceivably reproduce without the need for male involvement."

Federal government spends tens of millions of dollars annually on useless research

This would not be the first time, of course, that NSF has wasted gobs of taxpayer dollars on pointless research projects with no legitimate outcomes. Back in 2010, for instance, ABC News reported that NSF spent $216,000 on research that investigated how political doublespeak and ambiguity causes politicians to either gain or lose support from voters. In other words, nearly a quarter-million dollars was wasted analyzing how the lies of sleazy politicians affect the way voters feel about them.

"I would tell you that there's hundreds of billions of dollars every year that, if the American taxpayer could go down through it, they'd say 'wipe this off, this off, this off ... we don't think any of this is important,'" explained Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK.), author of a report on government waste, to ABC News at that time. (http://abcnews.go.com)

Other examples of extreme government abuse and waste of taxpayer dollars include a 2011 study on why chimpanzees throw their own poop, which cost taxpayers nearly $600,000, and a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) study on whether or not Japanese quail have more sex when they are high on cocaine, which cost taxpayers nearly $200,000. (http://moneymorning.com)

"[W]hile such waste is just a fraction of the federal government's $3.8 trillion budget, a country that needs to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spends should not be throwing money away on non-essential research," writes David Zeiler for MoneyMorning.com.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.breitbart.com