WTW72: Campus Reform Calls Out "Outrageous" Scientific Studies But Doesn't Understand How Science Works

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M &M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's a Woke. This Thomas. That over there is my amazing wife, Lydia Smith. How are you doing, Lydia?

0:00:48 Lydia: I am doing pretty well. I spent a lot of time on the NIH website, actually. Yeah. To prep for what we're going to talk about today. Up ridiculous studies.

0:01:01 Thomas: Oh, okay. I thought I was going to say, here I thought our NIH was all on Serious Inquiries Only. Did do a big, like a record scratch. What? We're talking NIH over here too? What is it, Christmas? Christmas?

0:01:14 Lydia: Are. I know it was. Wow. Look at that. So I stumbled on this campus reform article that was titled 10 Outrageous Taxpayer Funded Higher Ed Research Projects Doge Can Investigate. And so I investigated them. And we're going to talk about that today.

0:01:34 Thomas: I can't wait. I bet this is going to be really dumb. However, yeah, I'm all for if someone finds the government wasty thing. Sure, I mean, Doge is stupid and shouldn't exist, but I, oh, wait, you know, I just realized they have a thing that does that already, and it's like, you Redundant to have two of them. It's kind of funny, but as Matt As Matt pointed out, it's kind of silly to have two things that are both trying to take care of government waste and redundancy.

0:01:37 Lydia: Yes, you'd be right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:02 Thomas: Yeah, let's make a third one. We need another one. I think that's the key odd numbers, you know, because that has to be able to eliminate the other ones. You know it has to be you need a tiebreaker vote because they would probably vote against each other you know game theory wise they'd be like well we're we're the better efficiency department yeah so you gotta have that we're just one yeah we're one more department of efficiency away from efficiency I'm telling you we're right there all right well we'll see you next time we're gonna take our usual break and uh when we return we will find out what those crazy Crazy woke -ists are spending our government, hard

0:02:02 Lydia: Efficiency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. They probably Probably would. Right. Right? Call Yvette. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:02:42 Thomas: -earned government dime on. So, hey, support the show at patreon.com/wherethereswoke. Get bonus fun stuff. I I think we have a fun bonus fund. I gotta say, it's fun in the same way that I think all of our listening audience is probably masochists. You know, let's be real. They're freaks. We're all freaks here. Because the thing that's the bonus is very painful it's it's the worst it's James Lindsay leading a panel uh is full on just he's actually turning into dr phil too in a weird way like he's like he sounds like him he's starting to look like him more very weird it's some like comedy where he accidentally consumed Dr. Phil's like essence scientifically in a lab. And he's like, yeah, it's like how Tim Allen turns into Santa Claus,

0:03:00 Lydia: It's the freak show. Yeah? It's shocking. Yeah! Yeah! Mannerisms. Yeah... A nutty professor. Yes.

0:03:32 Thomas: But, but instead it's Dr. Phil and he's slowly doing it. Oh man.

0:03:35 Lydia: My God. I would break that contract so fast. I'd be like, no.

0:03:39 Thomas: It's so, it sucks. It's painful, but Hey, we all know you're a bunch of freaks. You guys, you like, let's be real. You, You, you, why you support us to harm you. Yeah. Psychologically. We, we know, we, we're willing to provide that service. We don't ask any questions. We don't, you know, we don't judge.

0:03:48 Lydia: Fellow freaks.

0:03:59 Thomas: So patreon.com/wherethereswoke. If and it'll show up in a totally discreet package, unmarked white wrap pack. No one will, no one will know. No one, no, no. No one be the wiser. They're like, Oh, patron where there is woke. That must be a fun, cool, normal thing. Yep. Totally. Completely normal. Right. Where do we begin? Is this like one of those top 10 situations?

0:04:21 Thomas: Like we can do a David Letterman top 10 list.

0:04:21 Lydia: It 10. I'm probably going to jump around because I don't think the author has set this up in a way that like really leans into the top 10. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do want to start, though, with who is this author? Her name is Emily Sturge. She's class of 2025. So she's coming up on graduation pretty soon out of the University of, yeah, yeah. She's at the University of Florida studying political science and journalism. And wouldn't you know it, she's already had appearances on Fox News. And so I sent you a clip so we can hear from Emily on how she got involved with campus reform.

0:04:31 Thomas: You have notes. You Have Formatting Notes. Oh, that's right. Cause it's, oh, it's like the actual campus -y people. I always forget.

0:05:02 Thomas: At what point are they just going to be hiring conservative toddlers to like, starting them young.

0:05:06 Lydia: Yeah. I mean, the pipeline is real.

0:05:08 Thomas: Yeah. As our ideology gets dumber dumber and dumber. We have to start sooner and sooner. I'm

0:05:09 Lydia: Start

0:05:13 Clip: It is Young Conservatives Week here on Mornings with Maria. My next guest is another promising young conservative speaking out against wokeness on college campuses and how she's standing her ground in the face of censorship. Joining me right now is campus reform correspondent and University of Florida student,

0:05:28 Thomas: Activists are people whose classmates were killed in a shooting. That's that's the left activists. And they're like, OK, fuck, this sucks. I never asked for this. This is horrible. Or it's a girl who doesn't want the planet to die. You That's the activists that I see as children on the left, you know, but but for real, it's like a lot of like shooting victim. Don't it's people who have had actual harm happen to them and the people around them and are like wow this fucking sucks hey adults oh you're not doing anything oh okay we'll try to do something that's ours theirs is like hey we're running a little um beauty pageant and where it's little nazis little and it yeah pretty much yeah I can't think of everyone that's you you beat you you won. Yeah.

0:06:10 Lydia: Nazis and tiaras. Yeah. Thank you. I watched a lot of reality TV.

0:06:22 Thomas: Nazis and TRS pretty much. And it's like, they have their little talking points and they're just, it's all it's God. It's so, ah, okay. All right. Here we go.

0:06:31 Clip: Emily Sturge. Emily, great to see you. Thanks very much for being here. Assess the situation for us. What do you see regularly in college?

0:06:38 Thomas: Well, I see the money and opportunity in fascism.

0:06:40 Clip: Good morning, and thank you so much for having me. As a student at the University of Florida, I've seen firsthand how America's college campuses have become sites of blatant leftist indoctrination, punishing conservative views on college campuses.

0:06:56 Thomas: Mom's in the background. Come on. She's

0:07:00 Clip: As I was a freshman during my freshman year of college, I saw that this is what was happening in the classrooms, and I decided to start speaking out against

0:07:00 Thomas: Gonna be so pissed her mom. Her mom's doing her exact routine, like in the, in the wings, you know, like trying to get oh my

0:07:12 Lydia: Like in Mean Girls, Amy Poehler. Yeah.

0:07:16 Clip: I vowed to fight against the leftist indoctrination that I was seeing in the classroom and that's why I started reporting for campusreform .org at campusreformed .org we discuss what's happening on america's college campuses and through my reporting I've seen real changes happen on my own college campus okay

0:07:21 Thomas: It's so fake oh she might as well be created in a lab it's so artificial and I don't mean I don't mean that as a comment on like her looks or like literally it's just she's she's an artificial creation of this system is all I mean like it's like yeah it's so generic yeah

0:07:46 Lydia: Yeah yeah they're trying to create like mini Tommy Lahrens or something and but she's not as like like sort of Tommy Lahren. She's you of boring honestly and just espouses this ambiguous rhetoric that doesn't actually mean anything when she's on there. But set up this article basically saying that needs to cut back waste and fraud in higher education. Much wasteful spending is happening on America's college campuses. Doge chiefs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can push Congress to launch a thorough investigation into these questionable expenditures, particularly federally funded research projects that push far left ideologies. All right. So what are these far left ideologies. Going to go through some of these studies. The All first one that she highlights, gambling for pigeons. The NIH granted $465,000.

0:08:37 Thomas: Just from their point of view I just yep nope that's what we're into left leftists we just want pigeons to be gambling. That's our next thing. So stupid.

0:08:49 Lydia: Institute of Health granted $465,339 to researchers at Reed College in Portland to create a token -based economy where pigeons are taught to gamble with slot machines. I looked into this and yes, yeah, it is correct. An NIH -funded study, I could verify the dollar amount. Some of these, I Could Not Verify the Dollar Amount that she was saying, but we're looking at $465 ,000 approximately out of Reed College. Grant that is offered, that $460,000 is for three years. And specifically, it's from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. And what they're looking at is whether

0:09:02 Thomas: Sounds cool. We turn people into pigeons, will they stop their gambling problem?

0:09:30 Lydia: Specifically looking at behavior when something is starting to become like activating that addictive part of the brain. And so they're doing it with pigeons because this is because I mean, like, yeah, you look at like pigeons, you Look at rats, you Look at primates.

0:09:41 Thomas: Because fuck pigeons. Now birds are weird, weirdly smart.

0:09:49 Lydia: They are they are and yeah, and you can teach them to use tools and things like that.

0:09:49 Thomas: It's crazy. Yeah. And you know how we know that? Dumb shit like this. This in their world, in their world, should we just not know things? Like we we just not know things you know like any any little fact any whatever like this way hey did you know if you give a crow a fucking a crowbar that's why they call it no they give them a tool and they'll if you Give them the game operation, they'll successfully do that. Like it's it's like that stuff. It's like that's cool. I like that. We know stuff like that is cool. Just

0:10:20 Lydia: And so so this study that they did was giving pigeons pigeons tokens that they could choose to earn, accumulate, spend, or gamble on slot machines. And so they wanted to kind of study like when pigeons are making those decisions, what's happening there. Now, Reed College does not receive much in NIH funding. And this opportunity explicitly did not allow like clinical trials using humans, right? So they They developed something that could be done with

0:10:47 Thomas: Picture people in like bird suits like Yep, definitely just pigeons guys. We're just totally gonna test these absolutely pigeons oh

0:10:54 Lydia: And since receiving this grant, I've seen three other funding opportunities for Reed that earned. One was for $420,000, which was looking at the impact of gender on alcohol use and peer drinking contexts. And the other was $514,000 looking at sexually differentiated motor rhythms. And $78,000 for creating an attractable model for metabolic disorder. So like these are all varied things. And I know Reed College tends to be one of the colleges that the right likes to go after. Don't think we've talked about it yet on this show, the John Ronson trauma episode. We're going to do that whole Reed College thing. Yeah. That's the same college.

0:11:31 Thomas: The wait that's oh I didn't make the connection

0:11:34 Lydia: Yeah, So there are four different studies here that I read to you, all varied things. And they decide to pick the one that, you put it into three words, okay, yeah, like, why in the world are we studying that? But like, the nuance of it is it's interesting. And like you said, it's just cool.

0:11:50 Thomas: Here's the other thing I don't know the odds that all this is going to be aces I don'T KNOW maybe some of it is bullshit but you know whose job it is to figure that out not fucking mine so academics they'll they'll sorted out yeah

0:12:02 Lydia: And the lead author on this, Timothy Hackenberg, he's received NIH funding for this area of research for several years. This is something where he has been studying this area.

0:12:11 Thomas: But he's just paid by big pigeon by big bird he's in the pocket of big bird is the problem they're

0:12:15 Lydia: Big bird, yes. Yep. So that's how we are kicking this off is gambling for pigeons and specifically Specifically, this particular funding opportunity that was posted was supposed to support small -scale research grants at institutions that don't receive substantial funding from the NIH. So they're trying to balance the issues there, like what we talked about over on SIO, that the NIH can be kind of a corrupting motivation for a lot of professors. And so but this

0:12:50 Thomas: All going into pigeon stuff don't

0:12:53 Lydia: Is kind of an opportunity explicitly for universities and colleges that don't normally get NIH funding because it is a very competitive field of money. And they wanted to look at biomedical research experiences that would be offered to undergraduate students in this funding purpose. And so that's exactly what happened here with the gambling for pigeons and Timothy Hackenberg's lab. Second study that we're going to talk about is maybe one of my favorite ones. This is titled Chimps Throwing Feces. And thank you.

0:13:27 Thomas: This we need to study this is yeah to

0:13:30 Lydia: So, this said that, you know, the NIH spent nearly $600,000 at Emory University to to explore why chimpanzees throw feces. And then another $117,000 was necessary to conclude that most chimps are right -handed.

0:13:43 Thomas: Get them back oh we're gonna throw our shit at them give me who's with me give me some funding oh

0:13:50 Lydia: So is actually really interesting because what they were looking at in this study was that the chimpanzees that were good at throwing aren't necessarily more physically impressive. So throwing, what they concluded, is probably not related to hunting. It's not related to a skill for hunting that instead it's probably more a form of communication

0:14:10 Thomas: It's about how aerodynamic your shit is

0:14:17 Lydia: No so uh the that were really good at throwing also seem to be better communicators in the group um also mapped brain activity with the chimps um they were throwing things and obviously there's a more developed cortex motor but also there were more connections with an area in the brain called Broca's area, which is an important part for us for speech. So this is a really interesting study to kind of understand the connection of or the development of communication over time and like the evolution with our brain that there specifically like a deeper connection between the motor cortex and an area for speech in chimpanzees. Also, I want to highlight, this is from 2011. So, yeah, this

0:15:01 Thomas: Yeah let's get those dollars back 2011

0:15:04 Lydia: Is going to be kind of common with a lot of these.

0:15:08 Thomas: Are you kidding me the

0:15:10 Lydia: So she specifically writes that, here are examples funded.

0:15:14 Thomas: Poop is long since dried on this one

0:15:16 Lydia: Here are examples of university studies funded by taxpayer dollars obtained by campus reform. Now, Obtained is doing a lot of work. Obtain means she did Google searches, honestly, because some of these studies that I'm going to read to you have been highlighted.

0:15:21 Thomas: Obtained yeah are you sure are sure it wasn't deep throat that was leaking the dossier of of completely insignificant expenses that we're doing stupid

0:15:35 Lydia: I know. I know, but you know, they are insignificant expenses, but, you know who gets all riled up about these kinds of things? Rand Paul. Rand Paul has cited some of the studies for years, and we'll play a video clip from him a little bit later. But these are not things that campus reform obtained. It literally was Emily Sturge on her computer on Google typing things in. They make it seem like she went into the NIH database and scoured it. And yeah, yeah.

0:16:02 Thomas: The secret woke like lab

0:16:04 Lydia: And that's literally not what happened. This stuff is regurgitated garbage that has already been mocked and ridiculed by folks on the right.

0:16:18 Lydia: Washington Examiner reported these dollar amounts, but I like went through the database and I can't find exactly what it is anymore. It was funded by a center of the NIH that doesn't exist anymore because they did a reorganization. So, you know, trying to figure that out. But the lead investigator for this, Bill Hopkins, is also an established grantee with the NIH. He has looked at hemispheric specialization and communication in primates, and he's an internationally renowned expert in primate neural and psychological processes. He has over 300 publications. He's done hundreds of invited seminars and talks. Like, This is, you someone, an expert in this area to help us understand evolution and communication. And it just happens to be that chimpanzees like to throw their poop. So let's take advantage of that behavior and start, you know, understanding like the like deeper meaning of that stuff. So,

0:16:55 Thomas: Knows his shit but yeah yeah well often often they emphasize the the certain like quirkiness of this stuff for virality in some ways

0:17:29 Lydia: Yeah.

0:17:29 Thomas: Like it's yeah don't know if we're going to talk about about this but like the way this funding tends to work is it's not like all right we got a 10 million dollar poop budget and we it's like all right you're paying you're paying like the grad students you're you're covering like positions or whatever it's all like there's a bunch of places where you're there's gonna be these line items that are like crazy expensive line items usually is my understanding it's It's like, you know, you're basically covering the professor and some students and, labor hours and some supplies right? I mean, yeah, it's not

0:17:59 Lydia: I'm like publishing fees probably like, yeah I really wanted to find the budget detail for all of these things through the NIH database but I wasn't able to find it. I even reached out to our favorite, Dr. Jenessa Seymour, to get her experience with NIH grant, you database research and stuff. And, yeah, nothing we could figure out. So would love to know the line items. I know, like, direct costs, indirect costs, but I don't know specifically how that is exactly laid out. And also, when we're talking about this stuff, it's really not that much money for most of these things.

0:18:32 Thomas: An amount of money. It's nothing. Plus it's from 2011. done with that one. I think that's over. Oh,

0:18:41 Lydia: I thought 2011 was bad. Here's the next one that I want to talk to you about. I'm going to talk about titled bees on cocaine. And yeah, and her sentence that she said was with cocaine in their system, with

0:18:49 Thomas: I already love it. Why don't you pick a good one? Why don'T you pick one that is a good example to

0:18:56 Lydia: Cocaine in their system, the bees were more likely to dance. So And this was $240,000 from the NIH to the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign. And yeah, this is from 2009. So yeah, exactly. There actually two separate opportunities here covering from 2005 to 2008. So we're still looking at, you know, like a three year period to get to that two hundred and forty thousand dollars. And the proposal for this funding was looking for innovation in drug research. So either they wanted, the NIH wanted to see new methods, new techniques, new comparative studies, you know, like animal comparative studies or receive research proposals from folks that are not necessarily experienced in drug research. They're experienced in other areas, but they'd be stepping into this area for the first time and bringing their knowledge and experience in a different field. This is coming from a guy who knows bees. He really, really knows bees, his name is Gene Robinson. And he we found that bees were more likely to dance. But here's what's actually going on here. Important thing is cocaine is a natural insecticide and plant protecting compound. And so they

0:19:07 Thomas: Their Coke dealer? So most of those bees like have a family by now and they've they've turned it around they're not you know well

0:20:15 Lydia: Wanted to know, OK, if cocaine is is available, it's on plants and bees are going around and pollinating, what is their response? Are they impacted by cocaine on plants? Research had said there's probably a difference between invertebrates and mammalian responses to cocaine. And this demonstrates, no, that bees have a similar response to cocaine as humans because they have similar neuromodulator systems. So it's acting on the bee in a similar way to how it acts on a human. And if you use cocaine or, you know, a compound similar to that as an insecticide, yes, it's going to protect your plants, but now you're destroying the pollinating behavior of bees and the impacts there. So this is really interesting. This professor has been studying bees for many, many, many years, like mapping their genome. So this is an opportunity, again, to have better understanding of similarities between invertebrates and mammals and the impact of how drugs might then operate on humans as well, because there's a surprising similarity with bees in particular.

0:21:25 Thomas: Know is I saw the big billboard that said coke it's the bees knees and I thought you know this isn't the best use of taxpayer funds now

0:21:32 Lydia: We're going to talk about some more substance abuse and the animal kingdom.

0:21:37 Thomas: From 1987 we need the twenty thousand dollars from the 90s back for the government eight quadrillion dollar budget it let

0:21:45 Lydia: This one, I am struggling to confirm the dollar tag that that they put on there. They said that the NIH gave $5 million to the Oregon Health and Science University to study if finches slurred their songs when alcohol was in their system. See three different grants in the NIH database base for the primary author from this, Christopher Olson. And they're 45 ,000, 47 ,000 51 ,000 between 2009 and 2011.

0:22:12 Thomas: Me check yep that's four million I added it up I

0:22:14 Lydia: 5 million. I said then I thought, okay, maybe they're including projects under Claudio Mello, because he is the lab.

0:22:22 Thomas: Course naturally that was the first thing you'd think

0:22:24 Lydia: Listen, I went deep on this. Okay. I think I would get anywhere close to 5 million. I mean, he's received a of other grants. But again, it's like the dollar amounts are not significant. So I

0:22:36 Thomas: I we better alert this team to their possible error I they're gonna be they're really gonna thank us oh thank you we

0:22:42 Lydia: Know Emily's going to be like, wow, thank you for the correction.

0:22:44 Thomas: We yeah we went over this with with a fine -tooth comb and we we we missed it. You know, they, they... What is the incentive for them to give a shit about accuracy? I mean, really? They can just pull it out of their ass.

0:22:53 Lydia: I know, I know. But I do. But I do and I want to fight back. So, um, I eventually found some funding information from the popular press that was covering the study at the time back in 2014 after it was published. And I didn't find dollar amounts still, but it received its main financial support from the National Gene Bank in China. That's not the NIH. That'S not America. It also received, you know, NIH money, the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is a a $22 billion institute in mostly private money that they distribute out for research purposes. They also received money from two different Danish foundations. Again, not America. So maybe the $5 million is gathering all of that stuff up and attributing China's money as the NIH giving them money, but that's not what happened.

0:23:18 Thomas: China.

0:23:47 Lydia: What they found was that That even if the bird wasn't necessarily behaving differently from alcohol ingestion, the slurred speech of the finches, was still happening. And so like mirroring that to humans, that it won't necessarily be, you know, that you're stumbling or having trouble. I mean, like the finches are probably still able to fly around wherever they're at, but speech their is changing. They're already starting to slur

0:23:46 Thomas: No, yeah, not at all. Yeah well, this is already

0:24:17 Lydia: Their singing.

0:24:17 Thomas: Interesting even from what you said. Like, the idea that a bird song can be slurred is super cool. Like it's, that's really interesting. Reminds me of how like, apparently there are like dialects and sign language, which makes makes total obvious sense. But like, I, it's so cool to think about how, obviously for me, I could not possibly fathom any of that. Like I wouldn't, it would be completely lost on me because I don't, that's not the language I speak, but what, for whoever, the way that humans communicate in whatever way that is. And I think it applies to animals too. There's like dialects and stuff. Like how fascinating is that?

0:24:50 Lydia: Hm.

0:24:50 Thomas: So the idea that they could, they could like slur their songs. It's really funny to me, but it's interesting. I made this joke over on SIO. But I guess what we need to do is only study the science that's the good, like, kind of guaranteed to be the breakthrough science. Like, we need, that's why it's the same, my other philosophy is only buy the winning lottery ticket. I only, that is, yeah, I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. I only buy one that is going to win. Like, why would you buy any of the other ones?

0:24:53 Lydia: I know. I know。 Just keep waiting. It's a good philosophy. Yeah. Yeah. Next study we're going to talk about is actually one that we mentioned in the SIO episode with Dr. Rick. And that is shrimp on treadmills.

0:25:29 Thomas: What?

0:25:29 Lydia: Yeah. So this is a National Science Foundation grant.

0:25:32 Thomas: Sounds like an old -timey thing. That place is going into shrimp on treadmills. Like hell on hockey skates or whatever are you

0:25:38 Lydia: Is $1.3 million grant for the College of Charleston in South Carolina. And the was making run on tiny treadmills, but really what they were doing was trying to understand how sickness impairs mobility. So the treadmilles they found in previous research actually gets shrimp to elevate their activity level. Crabs do the same thing. And actually, if you want, I can send you this little video so you can kind of watch it in action. I'll include it in the show notes so folks can watch it, too, since I know this is not a visual platform.

0:26:11 Thomas: Crab on a treadmill yeah

0:26:16 Clip: That we have designed for the Atlantic blue crab, Calamectes sapiens, which Lindy Thibodeau, my graduate student, has just put into the treadmill. What we do is we simulate making them sick with a bacterial infection by injecting a dose of bacteria that they normally experience in the wild. What that tells us is how might the blue crab alter its performance If it's now sitting on a treadmill in water that has low oxygen, how might it perform on a treadmill if it is suffering from some form of pollution like heavy metals or some kind of organic pesticides that are put out

0:26:27 Lydia: Sounds pretty relevant.

0:26:58 Clip: In the environment?

0:26:58 Lydia: Yeah.

0:26:58 Thomas: No like science stuff that's what it sounds like to me you know the programs we all watched as kids that were kind of interesting but also if you're not into it whatever but like science that sounds like silence that the scientists do I

0:27:10 Lydia: Yeah I mean this is also again laziness from Emily's and this study was was called out in Senator Tom Coburn's report, a senator out of Oklahoma, of wasteful government spending back in 2011 and went viral because there were actually videos of shrimp and crabs walking on treadmills. And so people really like that.

0:27:31 Thomas: More shrimp money because I didn't even know shrimp could do a treadmill. I'll be honest. I thought they just went in cocktails. I didn'T know they actually did anything.

0:27:34 Lydia: I know. I've been Cocktails.

0:27:41 Thomas: I assumed that when people do the shrimp cocktail, they're recreating the shrimp's natural environment. And so you're saying that's not how it works. Okay.

0:27:47 Lydia: Burnett. No, no. Lou Burnette, the primary

0:27:51 Thomas: Do they have little legs or something? No, I'd need to know this. This is important. Do shrimp have little eggs? I don't know. I don, I hate shrimp. I don't eat shrimp. So it's like, I'm at a disadvantage here. Like I need, I need help. They have wings? What are they?

0:27:51 Lydia: Investigator here. Letís see. They donít have wings shrimp

0:28:09 Thomas: Well, shrimp on a treadmill. Right, we're going to get the answers to this. If I see these shrimp have little, like, human -like legs that pop out of their little shrimp thing, and they're just walking, they're actually really toned. They don't skip shrimp leg day. Whoa, they have, like 100 legs. Jesus, save some legs for the rest of us. Oh, gross. God, no, I'm so glad about my decision to not eat these.

0:28:09 Lydia: On treadmill yeah

0:28:35 Thomas: Disgust oh there's like a centipede oh my god you people eat this shit it's disgust it's like a it looks like we've blown up an image of like lice or something you know like one of those hey my last this was worth whatever amount of money that we spent to find out that no one should eat this disgusting creature gross oh I gotta I gotta wipe my hard drive after a while I can't even 2011.

0:28:33 Lydia: Bugs not eat them oh yeah yeah All right. That went viral because people wanted to watch videos of shrimp and crabs walking on treadmills. Lou Burnett, the primary investigator for this study, addressed the misinformation at that time in 2011. And Emily is still regurgitating it here. 2011. Yeah. Yeah. And he said that the money that they receive, in this case, it was the National Science Foundation, goes to his lab and it's funding a lot of different projects.

0:29:31 Thomas: Yeah. Eels on treadmills, crabs

0:29:33 Lydia: It's Not a one point three million dollar treadmill. Right. It's the first treadmill they built. He said it was free. They just use scraps around the lab and kind of like made it like fit together and stuff. The second one was fancier and cost about $1,000. So yeah.

0:29:33 Thomas: On treadmen. Yeah, wow. What I'm talking about. How can we get one of those babies? Yeah, it's it's going to end that we still don't know the actual money, but it's probably, you know, yeah, the the cost of the labor and the gotten the grad students and the whatever, and it's pretty standard. And it's, it's basically, we pay a certain amount of minuscule money that would make no, if we got rid of all of this tomorrow, it would make No difference to anyone except science, these, except like to the taxpayer, we make no difference to the government, to the taxpayer, to The Nothing, we would just live in a shittier country, which is what they want. But it's like, this is just paying scientists is to do science stuff, man. You know, like my, sorry if I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but here's my takeaway. Like I assume they have some sort of quality control or they have some sort or whatever, like with anything government, like, with COVID funding. Obviously, you know, I supported a lot of the COVID funding, tons of COVID fraud, mostly perpetrated by Republicans who then later are like, how dare we forgive student loans? But even if they weren't fraudsters, even if there were just getting help, it's like, I assume that we have an office of accountability maybe like doge except real that

0:30:56 Thomas: Checks hey professor shrimp over there is this real and they audit stuff probably and if you commit fraud it ruins your whole academic career is what I would imagine and so like it's probably going to be pretty rare that like scientists are committing academic fraud or just fraud fraud and getting money they shouldn't get and I imagine that the consequences are pretty stark if they do and somebody's probably taking taking care of that yeah

0:31:20 Lydia: And it's not just the primary investigator who's on the line like they have to get support from their provost at their school. So the provost is putting also their name on the line. A lot of people that would be impacted if they're really trying to just get away with nonsense. Right. So we're done with our animals, unfortunately. But there's still some fun stuff we're going to talk about that I think is totally worth studying. The next one is a ,000 study to see if selfies make you happy. And yeah, so this is for of UC Irvine. And what I want to demonstrate here is that the National Science Foundation provided some funding here. And then also the Swiss Science foundation under a different grant and obviously Swiss money. Is again from 2014 and it was for a four -year term of the grant. So five hundred thousand dollars over the course of four years. Five hundred thousand dollars. I don't know if that is solely from the National Science Foundation or if that is combined again money from the Swiss government and our government. It was not five hundred dollars to answer the question. Do selfies make people happy.

0:31:50 Thomas: That feels relevant yeah yeah duh

0:32:32 Lydia: It was five $500 ,000 for multiple studies and published research. So there's one promoting positive affect through smartphone photography, but there's a variety of other things that they did via this study. So the grant abstract that they wrote, what they wanted to look for. Studies are suggesting that multitasking with digital media is associated with errors, stress, and degraded performance. This study provides two main research contributions. First, to date, no one has conducted an in situ investigation. So in the origin place of multitasking among the millennial generation. So wherever they're at, you know investigating what multitasking looks like for them second whereas most investigations have approached multitasking as an individual activity this research will instead take a new perspective on multitasking as a collaborative social system so that's something that they aren't even outlining here on campus reform that they're just looking if selfies make you happy and there's this whole other question of collaboration and multitasking on how that actually works if connectivity leads to information overload and distraction, how online media experience affects learning, communication, and behavior offline, and the relationship between degree of connectivity and work performance. So this is a comprehensive, like very thorough approach, of research questions. And only one of them is this study promoting positive affect through smartphone photography. Taking taking

0:33:15 Thomas: Here which

0:34:03 Lydia: Selfies does boost your mood. Yeah.

0:34:03 Thomas: Is nothing wrong with it anyway it boosts your mood well no wonder I'm so grumpy all the time I've literally never taken a selfie in my life does it count if it's with the kids okay and I see oh okay yeah

0:34:14 Lydia: I think so, an Essie. Also one here that I have a lot of information about because what I could find on it was largely in French. Essentially, there is a researcher out of the University of Connecticut, who received a National Endowment for the Humanities for $30,000, literally nothing, like nothing. And also, again, it's not the National Institute of Health. It's not the National Science It is the National Endowments for the humanities. So keep that in mind. And this at what's referred to as the secret language of French French butchers. And I really curious about this because I was like, what the heck? I ended up watching a YouTube video in French with like English subtitles on trying to understand what was happening. And what it is, is this was a very common way for butchERS to to each other a customer knowing what they're talking about. So sometimes what they they would do is they would remove the first letter from the word,

0:34:39 Thomas: That's nothing that's an insult it's not even worth it pig latin

0:35:19 Lydia: Move it to the end, kind of, and then they'd have an L at the beginning of it. Yeah, it's so, so interesting. They would talk in this way. So like if a customer asked for a particular cut of meat and they didn't have it, like they could have that conversation with their coworker and figure out how they're going to meet that customer's need without making the customer mad. But is something that everybody thought was like, oh, maybe it's just gone. And this researcher found it's not. She actually like interviewed like 200 Parisian butchers and they don'T necessarily know the origin of it, but a lot of them still speak it. It. Then And she also found like a gender difference because their butchers tend to be male And so women

0:35:20 Thomas: Very close to pig latин right oh yeah

0:36:03 Lydia: In Paris that are involved in the butcher shop or are, you significant others of the butchERS or something, they can understand it, but they say they can't speak it. Yeah. So it's just like really interesting. And it cost thirty $30,000.

0:36:16 Thomas: This is it sounds like we're studying something they just want us to live in in a dim fucking world of no knowledge it's just such a sad world yeah

0:36:18 Lydia: And know, I know. I'm going to close this out with one of the ones that I find so interesting. And it's also the highest dollar, price tag on this. No, $7 million.

0:36:33 Thomas: 48 okay but but confirmed seven, because last, last million's was fake so she's

0:36:41 Lydia: For sure. I guess I cannot necessarily confirm it 100%, but it is it's

0:36:47 Thomas: In on it she can't confirm or deny oh

0:36:49 Lydia: From the National Cancer Institute, and this is for a project out of Stanford University. And so the way that they characterize this is they say the cancer Institute funded nearly seven million dollars to researchers at Stanford University to build an A.I. toilet. The toilet is a the toilet is equipped with cameras that scans the user's waste and unique anal print. So I

0:37:06 Thomas: I want one god damn it I already said I want your distinct

0:37:16 Lydia: I was, like, I need to know more. This is actually doing is, and we've talked about this before, too, is this is precision medicine. If we're talking about, yeah, like...

0:37:26 Thomas: Anal print yeah I would say we're gonna solve a lot of crimes with this he left his anal prints everywhere his anal prints are all over this wow

0:37:32 Lydia: Well, if my God. What toilet does, it's It's actually hardware and software that you can install on a normal toilet, like a standard toilet, and it performs urinalysis and uroflometry, and in urinalysis, the toilet deploys and retracts a strip that's soaked in urine, and then they can screen across 10 biomarkers to look for presence of things like diabetes. Um, I mean theoretically also you could find out if you're pregnant, like having this thing dip and and retract and the toilet all does it by itself the able to look at urine flow you get to look At like the flow rate time elapsed um might be able to identify a uti um you might Be able to identify a prostate problem right um I will say men requires the placement of two cameras on the bowl. And so when they were looking at how to take of seated users while they're peeing because their genitalia would be completely exposed and they do care about privacy and comfort, they figure that out for seated users. So just men, or I guess if you like squat, maybe as a woman. The smart toilet can also perform real time defecation analysis. So as poop stool, they don't say poop, I say poop. As the stool falls into the toilet, the able to run the Bristol stool form scale and measure the duration of the defecation. So now they're able to characterize things like this. That's important for things like early detection of colon cancer, hence why the National Cancer Institute is interested in this.

0:38:40 Thomas: Look if these weirdos want to study people's shit just let them do it just let them do I'm not doing it are you gonna do it you want you want to do it fine you do it whatever her name was I already forget emily completely replaceable uh of of all the other exact fucking clones.

0:39:25 Lydia: Emily Sturge. All the Emilys.

0:39:31 Thomas: Yeah. Do it.

0:39:33 Lydia: So I think have seen so far is right now this is theoretical, but the National Cancer Institute is interested enough for them to build a prototype. And so they say, OK, here's some money to fund this project. Project. Is not something where it's like the National Cancer Institute is giving them $7 million and then nothing happens. They're going to take what they build and then do additional research. And what they want to see is, will this improve patient health outcomes? This is something everybody should be interested in and that they're trying to keep the cost down. So it's something that people in rural environments or remote areas that don't have access to a doctor for hours, you from where they live, there's still the opportunity to evaluate very important like biological processes for them. And they would, you know make sure it's HIPAA compliant, all those things. Also want to look to see about sending it into space because astronauts are deployed for such a long period of time that this is another way they can kind of monitor monitor their health and make sure that they're OK.

0:40:36 Thomas: Now it does sound a little what's her name ask.

0:40:40 Lydia: Yeah. Elizabeth.

0:40:42 Thomas: Yes. Thank you. I'm so glad. I

0:40:43 Lydia: What's I think that's fair. But you know how we're going to find out if that's the case? By

0:40:47 Thomas: We're going to hear the pitch person and how deep their voice is. Okay. This toilet is totally going to change the yeah

0:40:51 Lydia: Being funded by the federal government means there is going to be significantly more oversight than if this was funded by a venture capitalist. If this was funded by like a private company, then I think it's a lot easier to pull the wool over their eyes like Elizabeth Holmes did with Theranos. I don't know how much federal money she got necessarily. But this right now is solely funded federally. And it's a variety of researchers. They have a number of authors and stuff that put together these these schematics. I looked at them. I mean, I can't.

0:41:04 Thomas: Skeet

0:41:31 Lydia: I'm in no position to evaluate them to see if they're reasonable or not, but they're interesting. They have drawings and everything put together.

0:41:28 Thomas: Medic skeet nah sorry well we'll get emily on it she'll I'm sure god these people are useless they're fucking useless what

0:41:42 Lydia: And to close it out, I just want to say that, you again, we are talking about not tons of money.

0:41:48 Thomas: Is the whole fucking budget of this a billion five billion what is it 80 billion dollars

0:41:55 Lydia: So, let's see, they've had, uh, no, they've, they're, they, they had increases, um, recently. Uh let's going to start here. So in 1992, the NIH budget was about 1 % of the federal government's operating budget. And then from 1993 to 2001, they doubled its budget. It remained flat about that time, and then obviously we had the budget

0:41:57 Thomas: It's not $400. What? Okay. Doubled it in percentage terms or in real terms?

0:42:21 Lydia: In real terms.

0:42:22 Thomas: Okay, real terms.

0:42:24 Lydia: NIH budget remained flat as we were going through the 2008 and all of that. And then in 2009, Congress authorized the NIH budget to go up to 31 billion dollars effective in 2010. And then in 2017 and 2018, they increased it again. And so now we're looking at about $37.3 billion annually. Now, the NIH is composed of a ton of different entities.

0:42:54 Thomas: Yeah, that's not all going to the funding of shrimp treadmill people.

0:43:00 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not just shrimp treadmill. So they of funding that they're doing internally in the NIH, and then they have the extramural arm, which is when they're funding research projects. 27 institutes and centers of different disciplines in the NIH. And some of these efforts are things that created vaccines against hepatitis, HPV, figuring that lithium helps to manage bipolar disorder, that fluoride prevents tooth decay. Like all of those things were NIH funded projects that have real applications for humans. I mean, RFK, I guess, wouldn't agree because he's very anti -fluoride.

0:43:25 Thomas: Ooh, that is a good one. I was going to say, it is amazing that a lot of that stacks up with their bullshit conspiracy theories. But yeah oh is

0:43:49 Lydia: NIH doesn't get to just magically decide how much money they want to give to people either. The funding process for this, and you're familiar with this having worked in state government, NIH funding takes about 18 months. Develop. So you have the individual institute and centers, the leaders of those submit requests to NIH leadership after they've collaborated with a bunch of scientists in their area about what to fund. What are the areas that, you want to continue work in? What are some like new and developing areas that we hadn't really considered before? But it's like cutting edge research. Then they negotiate with Health and Human Services after that's gone up to them. Health and Human Services submits it to OMB Office of Management Budget. Then OMB makes changes because they are the, the vision of the president. And so they want to make sure that that the president supports it. And then that's submitted to Congress by February for consideration of the next year's budget. It. So there are a lot of hands in this to make sure that it is reasonable, that it's funding areas in, you know, like cancer research, AIDS research, drug research, just all over the map. And are particular with offering grant money, too. In 2016, for example, 54,220 grant applications were submitted, and overall 19% were awarded funding. So it is a competitive process. I had mentioned previously, you know, this is kind of a continuing song and dance for conservatives, especially. And Rand Paul, this is like his favorite thing to do. Is April 2021. And actually, Bob Menendez is it's kicking us off in this hearing so if you want to play that I

0:45:33 Clip: Let me turn, I see Senator Portman's not with us at this moment, so let me return to Senator Paul This bill has been devised as a way to counter China by by spending government funds to the National Science Foundation, about $10 billion a year. I think it's important before we add $10 billion a year to the National Science Foundation, this will be a parliament too, that we look a little bit at how successful they've been. We haven't authorized them in years, but we just keep funding them. They currently spend about $8 billion, so this would move and double their budget. Government, as we all know, lacks the profit motive and is inherently less efficient in the marketplace. Place. Congress has doled

0:45:40 Thomas: Right dipshit here we go nope oh

0:46:12 Clip: Out money again and again to the National Science Foundation only to see the money wasted decade after decade. There's no evidence it will be any different this time. In 1975, the conservative Democrat William Proxmire criticized the NSF for spending $84,000 to try to find out why people fall in love. Now, 45 years later, the NSF is still spending money, $585,000 to be exact, to find out how people fall in love, studying online dating habits. The late Senator Coburn similarly criticized the NSF for wasting money. I'm sure we've all heard of the infamous shrimp on the treadmill, the nearly $700 ,000 project to run a shrimp on an underwater treadmill. That's not all.

0:46:51 Thomas: Yeah I heard that on where there's woke yeah that was the project it was just

0:46:55 Clip: $700 thousand in money that was to be spent on autism research was subgranted to study Eddie Weather and Neil Armstrong, when he stepped on the moon, said, one small step for man, or one small step for a man. That was $700 ,000 worth of autism research. This is the group you're wanting to give the money to. In the end, they listened to the tape over and over, the crackly tape from the moon and they couldn't decide. So what does that have to do with China? Well, some economists want to pour tens of billions more into this very agency, the National Science Foundation putting it now in charge of science but technology research as well how well will the money be spent let's look at the do with the money they already have 1 .5 million to study how to improve how tomatoes taste researchers

0:46:56 Thomas: We just wanted to run it 70 000 we're just like hey how much yeah

0:47:43 Clip: Determined that adding sugar would help what about a hundred eighty eight thousand to study why Americans won't use the metric system thirty thousand dollars to study gambling habits in Uganda and five hundred thousand dollars to study if you take a selfie of yourself while smiling and look at it later in the day whether that will make you happy. Unless studying selfies is somehow a deterrent to China, what Congress is doing

0:48:10 Thomas: Dude we should just read descriptions of their jobs and their salaries hey we pay whatever the fuck congressional salary is for some asshole to just stand there and sit there and read a page that has inaccurate descriptions and incomplete descriptions of science and then made up shit with line yeah man we can do that for you too I

0:48:27 Lydia: And things that had been addressed I mean like uh you know this is is 2021. And poor time and time again, like these researchers have had to come out and help correct correct the misinformation that goes viral related to their life's work essentially and what the funding was and, you why it was worthwhile. And it's just so unreasonable that like everything that they have going on that they half to spend their time doing that as well. You should be able to just trust that these entities are funding things through a competitive process for research that has been argued and justified as being worthwhile for X, Y, and Z. And why do we all have to judge it?

0:49:09 Thomas: Hate these fucking fascist clowns who want us to live in a world with no knowledge I can't take it anymore I've had an I'm saturated hun that enough fuck these people that's it in this upcoming 2024 election I'm gonna make sure that I don't vote for For these people. And I hope that you all. Wait what's the date? Never mind we're fucked. Happy New Year everyone.

0:49:35 Lydia: Yep. So we'll also hear more from Emily, I'm sure, if she steps into the space. She's already written another article about five wasteful uses of taxpayer money in 2024 lawmakers should investigate in 2025 um one of them is uh one of then was the national foundation grants fifty thousand dollars to boise state researchers to study white supremacist extremism why in the world are we going to ask congress to give a crap about fifty thousand oh because it's about what they're studying and they don't want that

0:49:53 Thomas: Food to babies. Wow. Yeah. We're also wasting negative 10 million dollars on that. Because we need to be researching it. More money. Give them more money please.

0:50:15 Lydia: Yep. There you have it. Emily Sturge, her terrible article of things that campus reform obtained.

0:50:23 Thomas: Boy this place is going to shrimp on a hockey skates.

0:50:25 Lydia: I don't like that.

0:50:26 Thomas: This place is gonna shrimp on a treadmill. Knows his shit but yeah Do shrimp have little eggs? I going to notice.

0:51:06 Lydia: What's Her name? Elizabeth.

0:51:08 Thomas: Holmes. No.

0:51:10 Lydia: Elizabeth, maybe.

0:51:11 Thomas: Holmes.

0:51:12 Lydia: Elizabeth Holmes.

0:51:13 Thomas: Is that something?

0:51:14 Lydia: Does that sound right?

0:51:16 Thomas: Anybody? Are you going to help us?

0:51:18 Lydia: Yes. Elizabeth