I’m genuinely curious what you and others who share your thoughts have in mind when they say there are a lot of useless and frivolous scientific studies. Can you please share some examples, I’d like to learn more about them.

As far as I know, receiving government funding for a scientific study is a highly competitive process. Proposals are examined by qualified experts who evaluate their merit, relevance, and scientific rigor long before money is awarded.

I can understand why non-scientists might jump to the wrong conclusions, especially if they only ever see sensational headlines or oversimplified editorials. But this is exactly why it’s so important to recognize our own limits and defer to the people who actually work in these fields. It takes maturity and intellectual humility to admit when something is outside our wheelhouse.

Curious people and scientists alike know to read past the headline, because that’s where the actual knowledge lives. The studies I know of that are most often mocked as “frivolous” are examples of how misleading a surface-level reading can be:

“Drunk ants fall mostly on their right side.” This is actually an urban-myth-tier claim. There has never been a funded study or published paper demonstrating a one-sided “drunk ant” effect.

“Cocaine makes honey bees dance differently.” The bee study wasn’t about amusing scientists with drugged insects. It examined how cocaine affects reward pathways and communication. This research was relevant to understanding addiction and motivation across species, including humans.

“Do woodpeckers get headaches?” This wasn’t a joke experiment. Woodpeckers were used as a natural model to study how repeated head impacts can occur without concussive injury, producing insights into human head trauma and designing better safety gear.

Ultimately, federal funding for scientific research is rigorous and competitive. Truly frivolous projects rarely make it through the approval process. What often looks absurd to the public is, in reality, carefully designed work grounded in expertise we don’t always see or fully understand.

This is exactly why listening to experts matters, and why it’s so dangerous that American policy makers are completely discounting scientific knowledge and expertise.