Waste of the Day: Hundreds of Thousands to Study Monkey Feces
Topline: There are plenty of vulgar euphemisms one might lob against the federal government and its wasteful spending, but sometimes the headline just writes itself.
That was certainly the case when the National Science Foundation committed funds to study monkey poop in Kenya’s Kakamega Forest.
The grants to Columbia University — a $276,000 award in 2006 and $169,000 in 2010 — would be worth $675,000 today.
The study is documented in the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the funding to dig into primates’ personal business.
Key facts: The grants were awarded from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Science to Marina Cords, a professor of ecology and evolution at Columbia University.
Cords and her team collected fecal samples from wild blue monkeys in the Kakamega Forest and tested their DNA to determine who the monkey’s father was. The goal was to learn what factors make the monkeys more or less likely to have children.
The study also served as “training of American and foreign students, both graduate and undergraduate, as well as a post-doctoral researcher.”
The government was so impressed by Cords’ work that they increased her funding twice until her initial award from 2006 reached a total of $276,000. Then, they awarded her an entirely new grant in 2010.
Cords has since published at least three studies related to her work. Using samples of monkey feces, she was able to determine how blue monkeys navigate stress in their social environment and how the monkeys decide which females get priority access to fruit.
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Summary: The federal government often gets its hands dirty by reaching into the public coffers, but the phrase is typically not so literal.
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