The money, which comes from Recovery Act funds, is aimed at supporting "12,000 critical research projects -- and tens of thousands of jobs associated with them, ranging from teachers and lab technicians to database managers and scientists," the official wrote in an e-mail.

Lawmakers in Washington are calling on the National Institutes of Health to explain why millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on seemingly ridiculous research projects, including:

-- how dragon boating can help cancer survivors;
-- how canoes can help cultural identity;
-- how snorting cocaine creates anxiety.

In a letter to NIH director Francis Collins, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) on Thursday demanded to know the screening procedures and review criteria used to approve $1.6 billion in stimulus grants and another $20 million in grants from the regular NIH budget.

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.

The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars....

For instance, one senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.

Isn't that like racism/sexism in a nutshell?

Interestingly enough, NSF/NIH/DOD fellowship grants are funded the same way:

If there are 10 grants to be given, 5 will go to males and 5 to females. If 20 males and 5 females apply, all 5 females will get a grant regardless of how their research proposals stacked up against those submitted by males.

Grants to minorities work similarly. It makes white males the most competitive of the bunch, and leads to some interesting funding situations, where of the 1200 grants 4 will be in applied physics, and 50 will be in social science programs.

Note to self, when applying for a grant for research, "partner" with a female Native-American midget as the leading name on the project.

You'd have more grant money than you'd know what to do with!

Hmm.... can I reasonably justify a Ferrari as a "research vehicle?" I wonder...

Hmm.... can I reasonably justify a Ferrari as a "research vehicle?" I wonder...

That's okay. It sounds like the NIH doesn't know what to do with the grant money either!