The federal government has been busy allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars for bizarre research projects whose scientific value is... less than immediately obvious, according to a new report on recent wasteful federal spending to be released Tuesday by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). One such project had researchers giving finches grape juice laced with liquor to see if they would slur their tweets while drunk. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, discovered that intoxicated birds' songs are indeed "a bit less organized."
Other scientific advances noted in Flake's report include the discovery that it hurts more if a bee stings you on your nose than on your penis — at least for one specific guy, who was the entire sample size of a $1 million study. Also, $50,000 has purchased for taxpayers the information that Democratic women in Congress have less typically feminine features than their Republican counterparts. Now you know.
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