The Golden FLEECE Award and the Golden GOOSE Award

The Golden Fleece Award was created by Senator William Proxmire to publicize federal spending that he considered wasteful.  He gave out these awards from 1975 until 1988, and receiving one was not an honor.

I can still remember the first of the awards in 1975.  I was a graduate student at the time, and they made me mad because they were obviously “anti-science” and seemed to have no purpose other than to ridicule projects that had funny-sounding names.  I remember thinking, “How would Senator Proxmire know whether a science project had merit or not?”

Although when I decided to write about the Golden Fleece Awards, I had long forgotten the details of these projects, through the wonders of the internet I found  two 1975 Golden Fleece Awards that were given to science projects.  These were:

$84,000 from the National Science Foundation to “find out why people fall in love.”

$500,000 from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research to “determine under what conditions rats, monkeys, and humans bite and clench their jaws.”

Now, I’m sure when the first award was made, there were a lot of guys who said things along the lines of “Hey, man, like, let ME tell you why people fall in love . . . .”  And many people thought that, yeah, this was a huge waste of federal money.  

And in justification for selecting this particular project to receive a Golden Fleece Award, Proxmire said:

“I object to this not only because no one—not even the National Science Foundation—can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I'm sure that even if they spend $84 million or $84 billion they wouldn't get an answer that anyone would believe.  I'm also against it because I don't want the answer.  I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right on top of the things we don't want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa.”

Now, why anyone wants any aspect of the universe to remain a mystery is beyond me.  It is completely antithetical to science.  It is the opposite of wanting to know “why.” And it is a shame that people with this viewpoint can have an influence on science funding. 

Why people fall in love has in fact become a HUGE area of research, spanning chemistry, psychology, sociology, drug development, and mental health.  The cocktail of hormones involved includes testosterone, estrogen, vasopressin, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and adrenalin, not to mention pheromones.  Any study of the chemistry behind human behavior takes all or a subset of these hormones into consideration, in addition to others.  And they are central to the vast enterprise concerned with pharmaceutical developments to address dozens if not hundreds of mental health conditions, now affecting perhaps 25% of the population or more.

Of course, what I’m getting at here is that studies in one area lead to discoveries in others.  That is the nature of basic research, and what new avenues will be opened cannot be predicted at the start of any research program.

The second project, to “determine under what conditions rats, monkeys, and humans bite and clench their jaws,” has an interesting history.

The researcher involved with this project, Ronald R. Hutchinson, sued Proxmire for defamation in 1976, and the case went up to the Supreme Court.  The Court ruled 7 to 1 against Proxmire, and the parties settled out of court, with Proxmire paying Hutchinson $10,000 and all of his court costs.  The issue, in part, was that Proxmire used Hutchinson’s name, and the Supreme Court ruled that a recipient of a National Science Foundation Grant was not a public figure.  Therefore, Hutchinson did not have to show “actual malice” on Proxmire’s part.

Hutchinson’s research interest at the time was the study of emotional behavior, and he used jaw-clenching as an objective measure of aggression.  NASA and the Navy were interested in this work because they wanted to resolve problems that might arise when humans were confined in close quarters for extended periods of time.

Of course aggression is another human behavior that has become a large area of research, and Hutchinson seems to have ended up as CEO of The Foundation for Behavioral Resources, a organization that strives to enhance employability of unemployed workers who are receiving public assistance.

I think that the public’s dismay with the federal government’s funding of research projects with “funny-sounding names” is that there is a misunderstanding of what basic research really is.  Basic research is not necessarily focused on solving a societal problem.  It is research directed to understanding natural phenomena, and often there is no practical application for the results—at least not one that is known at the time the work is undertaken.

And that’s why the Golden Fleece Awards were so popular—because the research seemed silly and useless and a huge waste of money.  But since then, the world has learned that “blue sky” research does indeed have unexpected societal value.

Consequently, as a reaction to the Golden Fleece award and the fact that the media loves to play the game of mocking funny-sounding science projects, another award was established in 2012 called the Golden Goose Award.

The Golden Goose Award is the brainchild of Jim Cooper, a member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives.  It is given to science projects that started out with “funny” titles and ended up making staggering contributions to mankind.

For example, the Golden Goose Award was given to a 1961 project that proposed to study why jellyfish are fluorescent.  Now, I can imagine that this would have been a prime candidate for a Golden Fleece award.  I mean, who could possibly care why jellyfish shine in the dark?

In the years after the original research was conducted, the protein that was responsible for the fluorescence was identified, and then the gene that produced the protein was discovered.  Another scientist figured out that he could tell if certain genes were switched on or off by connecting fluorescence to genetic activity.  If the genes were active, then the protein was produced and the cells or entire organisms just lit up.  If the genes were silent, then there was no protein and the organism did not fluoresce.  Curiously, he tried this first with genes in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.  What a waste of federal money!  Roundworms—who cares?

It turns out that green fluorescent protein is probably the single most useful indicator of gene activity ever discovered.  Today it is used in nearly every genetic laboratory in the world.

And the researchers who figured out how to use the green fluorescent protein from jellyfish won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008.  

Another Golden Goose Award was given to a researcher who started out just using a microscope to look at the fine structure of coral.  Funded by NIH.  But, like, who could possibly care what corals look like close up?

It turns out that another scientist learned of the work and noticed that the fine structure of coral looked like bone, and wondered if coral could be used to make an improved artificial bone (because blood vessels and nerves would grow into it).  But the coral, which is made of calcium carbonate, broke down.  So then ANOTHER scientist wondered if a naturally occurring compound called hydroxyapatite could be made to grow into the coral and replace the calcium carbonate—thus preserving coral’s fine structure.  Bingo!  The new hydroxyapatite with a microstructure like coral and bone went on to become widely used for bone grafts.  All in all, this discovery involved four scientists in completely unrelated fields building off each other’s work.  And who knows how hydroxyapatite itself was discovered—but I guarantee it had its roots in basic science too.

A few words should probably be said about how our federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation make awards.  They don’t just line up all the applicants and throw darts.  First, only about 25% of proposals sent to NSF are funded.  Second, each proposal is reviewed by at least four scientists.  The final decision is made by a program manager, with each proposal being rated for both its scientific merit as well as its potential societal impact.  And the scientific  review is done anonymously so the scientists on the review panel can really take their gloves off and be as critical as they want—without the potential hazard of being found out by a colleague who made the proposal.

And this really is the key—anonymous peer review.  Curiously, not all countries in the world make funding choices using this method—in some places, decisions are made by the “good old boy” system.  But not in the U.S., at least to the extent that such things can be avoided.

Even though I have been making fun of the Golden Fleece Awards, I do think they have actually made our federal grant system better.  Note that the second criteria—societal impact—is actually new to the process, having been added only in the last decade or so.  Federal agencies have come “under the gun” to show that the expenditure of federal monies will benefit the public.  Now, on the one hand, this forces scientists to come up with a potential use for their research.  This is probably a struggle for many good and fine basic scientists, because in truth, a lot of them probably couldn’t care less.  They are interested in doing science.  But the societal benefit requirement at least forces them to use their imaginations to articulate a use, which could in turn make them more articulate when speaking with the public.  In this age of public accountability, that can’t be a bad thing.

But like almost everything else, scoring research based on “societal impact” has a downside. What if a scientist just wants to study coral reef micro-structure and can’t think of way the public might benefit,  except aesthetically? Just because it’s cool?   After all, when this research was first funded several decades ago, nobody knew what would come of it.  In many cases, that is how it happens—the basic science comes first and the use of the resulting knowledge comes many years later.

Why not support science because whatever we learn increases our appreciation of nature?  Demystifying nature should be one of the greatest societal impacts of all.  I guess this was possible back when we had more money to spend on research, but in these days of limited budgets, the public has the right to know how it will benefit.  

Aesthetics just isn't enough.

And speaking of aesthetics, I just have to tell you about a news item I saw this morning.  Totally not useful, but awesome nevertheless, and it shows that “blue sky” research does indeed continue.  Scientists have reported that DNA sequences in the genome of the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) have remained basically unchanged over millions of year.  Thus, it has been evolutionarily “conserved” since perhaps the age of the dinosaurs.  Now, this has absolutely no practical benefit that I can think of, except, of course, in the unlikely event that some extract derived from the tree has pharmaceutical value—then maybe this research will be “practical” in some way.  But I wouldn’t count on it.  This research was done for curiosity value alone, and it contributes a little bit to our understanding of plant evolution.

Going a small way to demystifying nature.