Waste in Federal Government

JamesL said:
Feds Still Studying Why Lesbians Are Obese
Update: Total government funding now $2.87 million

The federal government is still seeking answers as to why the majority of lesbians are obese and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, which now totals $2.87 million.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) study is now in its fourth year, receiving an additional$670,567for fiscal year 2014. The project seeks to determine why “nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese,” and why gay males are not.

In just two years the project’s budget has nearly doubled, growing from$1.5 million to nearly $3 million today, despite fears that sequestration could jeopardize the project and other NIH funding.

The study, which is being led by S. Bryn Austin, an associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, operates on the premise that there is a “striking interplay of gender and sexual orientation in obesity disparities.”

The researchers have been busier since last year, when the project had yielded only one paper. Those results concluded that gay and bisexual males had a “greater desire for toned muscles” than straight men.

The project now claims that lesbians have lower “athletic-self esteem” that may lead to higher rates of obesity. Another research paper found that lesbians are more likely to see themselves at a healthy weight, even though they are not.

Their research found that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and “mostly heterosexual” adolescents exercise one to two hours less a week compared to heterosexuals. The paper also said sexual minorities are 46 to 76 percent less likely to be on a sports team, due to “gender nonconformity and athletic self-esteem.”

“Physical activity contexts should be modified to welcome sexual minority males and females,” the authors concluded. “Targeting intolerance of gender nonconformity and fostering athletic self-esteem may mitigate sexual orientation [moderate/vigorous physical activity] MVPA disparities.”

Finally, the project has produced a paper claiming teens that are more feminine or masculine are more likely to engage in behaviors that can cause cancer. The study makes this claim after finding that feminine girls like to go to tanning salons and masculine boys tend to smoke.

“Prevention efforts that challenge the ‘masculinity’ of smoking cigarettes and cigars and chewing tobacco and the ‘femininity’ of indoor tanning to reduce their appeal to adolescents should be explored,” the paper said.

The sexual orientation and obesity study is slated to last until 2016. The latest grant comes receiving $682,873 last year, $778,622 in 2011, and $741,378 in 2012. The total for the project thus far is $2,873,440.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-still-studying-why-lesbians-are-obese/
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These worthless studies are just make work projects for idiots who've gotten a degree in women's studies and can't get a job. So the gov't gives them one.
 
Wasted! Feds spend millions of tax dollars getting monkeys drunk

There’s a whole lot of drinking going on in the name of government science, and some watchdogs think it’s the American taxpayer who is getting hammered.

Right now the National Institutes of Health is spending $3.2 million to get monkeys to drink alcohol excessively to determine what effect it has long term on their body tissue.

NIH also has handed out $69,459 to the University of Missouri to study whether text messaging college students before they attend pre-football game tailgates will encourage them to drink less and “reduce harmful effects related to alcohol consumption.”

And the government’s premier research arm has doled out money in recent years for research on binge-drinking mice, inebriated gamblers and pilots seeking the sensation of flying drunk — on a simulator of course.

NIH defends such expenditures on the grounds that these research projects help those they fund improve their “potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.”

In an email to The Washington Times, the NIH pointed out that the goal of the Missouri text message project wasn’t just to save the lives of coeds but also to empower “promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting dissertation research in scientific health-related fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers.”

In other words, it’s the sort of stuff that gets scientists excited.

But with 50,000 grants totaling $24 billion each year at taxpayer expense, NIH has some spending watchdogs and lawmakers in Congress wondering whether it has become a drunken spender that has wandered too far astray from its core mission.

“The National Institutes of Health has an outrageously large budget and gives away money with no real consideration of whether the projects being funded are of any value to taxpayers,” said David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a think thank focused on waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer moneys.

For its use of American tax dollars to study inebriated pilots, mice, monkeys and students, the NIH wins this week’s Golden Hammer, a weekly award from The Times aimed at highlighting examples of questionable or wasteful spending.

Congress created the NIH to develop “knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability.” But taxpayer advocates question whether many of its projects today really meet that mission.

“This is an agency that wastes our tax dollars to determine whether cutting the ovaries out of prepubescent rabbits causes them to have heart attacks, if physical activity can alleviate erectile dysfunction in obese men and what’s the best way to reduce tobacco use in Indonesia,” Mr. Williams said, citing some of his favorite examples. “Some of the projects the NIH funds are absolutely embarrassing.”

Alcohol and other vices have long been a favorite of NIH research grants.

Between 2008 and 2010 the NIH granted Yale University and Arizona State University a combined $154,688 to determine if drinking excess amounts of alcohol leads to losing more money while gambling.

To perform the study, researchers plied 21- to 30-year-old volunteers with enough alcohol for them to become legally intoxicated. Researchers then measured how well the twentysomethings performed gambling on video poker machines while drunk compared to when they were sober.

Story Continues →


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...pends-millions-to-study-drunke/#ixzz3D7zHQbH0
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
 
JamesL said:
Wasted! Feds spend millions of tax dollars getting monkeys drunk

There’s a whole lot of drinking going on in the name of government science, and some watchdogs think it’s the American taxpayer who is getting hammered.

Right now the National Institutes of Health is spending $3.2 million to get monkeys to drink alcohol excessively to determine what effect it has long term on their body tissue.

NIH also has handed out $69,459 to the University of Missouri to study whether text messaging college students before they attend pre-football game tailgates will encourage them to drink less and “reduce harmful effects related to alcohol consumption.”

And the government’s premier research arm has doled out money in recent years for research on binge-drinking mice, inebriated gamblers and pilots seeking the sensation of flying drunk — on a simulator of course.

NIH defends such expenditures on the grounds that these research projects help those they fund improve their “potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.”

In an email to The Washington Times, the NIH pointed out that the goal of the Missouri text message project wasn’t just to save the lives of coeds but also to empower “promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting dissertation research in scientific health-related fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers.”

In other words, it’s the sort of stuff that gets scientists excited.

But with 50,000 grants totaling $24 billion each year at taxpayer expense, NIH has some spending watchdogs and lawmakers in Congress wondering whether it has become a drunken spender that has wandered too far astray from its core mission.

“The National Institutes of Health has an outrageously large budget and gives away money with no real consideration of whether the projects being funded are of any value to taxpayers,” said David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a think thank focused on waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer moneys.

For its use of American tax dollars to study inebriated pilots, mice, monkeys and students, the NIH wins this week’s Golden Hammer, a weekly award from The Times aimed at highlighting examples of questionable or wasteful spending.

Congress created the NIH to develop “knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability.” But taxpayer advocates question whether many of its projects today really meet that mission.

“This is an agency that wastes our tax dollars to determine whether cutting the ovaries out of prepubescent rabbits causes them to have heart attacks, if physical activity can alleviate erectile dysfunction in obese men and what’s the best way to reduce tobacco use in Indonesia,” Mr. Williams said, citing some of his favorite examples. “Some of the projects the NIH funds are absolutely embarrassing.”

Alcohol and other vices have long been a favorite of NIH research grants.

Between 2008 and 2010 the NIH granted Yale University and Arizona State University a combined $154,688 to determine if drinking excess amounts of alcohol leads to losing more money while gambling.

To perform the study, researchers plied 21- to 30-year-old volunteers with enough alcohol for them to become legally intoxicated. Researchers then measured how well the twentysomethings performed gambling on video poker machines while drunk compared to when they were sober.

Story Continues →


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...pends-millions-to-study-drunke/#ixzz3D7zHQbH0
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
More...

And Democrats claim the cupboard is bare and there can be no more cuts.
 
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