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From: dhc@exodus.UUCP (David H. Copp)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Senator William Proxmire and The Golden Fleece Awards
Message-ID: <178@exodus.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Jul-84 16:35:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: exodus.178
Posted: Sun Jul 22 16:35:06 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Jul-84 02:18:24 EDT
References: <915@ulysses.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 17

There is a darker side to the Golden Fleece awards.
Proxmire sometimes villifies things that he doesn't understand,
and projects that really might be decent basic research.

Of course we have to make choices.  Of course, there are lots of
stupid and wasteful projects in the world.  But I recall that
Proxmire once fleeced some social research into the causes of marital
conflict.  Perhaps there was little chance of payoff, but if YOU
were asked to spend $50,000 out of the U.S. budget on a project
that had a 1% chance of reducing the divorce rate by 10%,
would it really be appropriate to say "it's not only not worth it,
it is so stupid that I will hold the proponents up to so much
ridicule that neither they nor anybody else will ever try it again?"

I prefer non-sensational peer review to public fleecings.
-- 
				David H. Copp