The title of this post is the title of a study that outgoing senator Tom Coburn made fun of in his 2014 Wastebook –a compilation of wasteful government expenditures. But Duke emeritus psychology professor John Staddon defends the study on the Pope Center site–and other studies that have laughable names.
In his view, the harm caused by studies that superficially sound wasteful is outmatched by harms from the government’s monopoly of research funding, the bureaucratic demands of that monopoly, and the self-satisfying bonuses that the monopoly gives to its minions.