As Elon Musk launches the Division of Authorities Effectivity to advocate spending cuts, he has highlighted examples of what he considers waste.
Musk, the world’s richest particular person, amplified posts on his X platform that mentioned the US authorities funded analysis on “transgender” monkeys, cats on treadmills and “alcoholic rats” sprayed with bobcat urine.
“Some of these things isn’t merely a waste of cash, however outright evil,” Musk wrote on November 13.
“Your tax {dollars} at ‘work’,” Musk mentioned on November 12 with a laughing emoji with tears.
Musk mentioned he desires the federal authorities to chop “at the least $2 trillion”, or nearly 30 % of what the US authorities spent in 2024. Trump didn’t specify a goal quantity for the group led by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, however he set July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, as a deadline for figuring out cuts. The division could make suggestions, however Congress has the final word energy on spending selections.
Many federal analysis initiatives Musk cited overlap with findings in annual “Festivus” studies about authorities spending by Republican US Senator Rand Paul, who mentioned Musk and Ramaswamy can use his studies as “inspiration”.
Some initiatives stretch again a long time. For instance, one checklist on X compiled by Dillon Loomis, host of the YouTube present Electrified, known as out Division of Agriculture bank card spending on “live performance tickets, tattoos, lingerie and automobile funds”. This got here from a 2003 authorities audit.
Musk boosted one other X publish by The Redheaded Libertarian that mentioned the federal government spent $4.5m “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine” in 2020.
Medical analysis has lengthy been a bipartisan goal for criticism, Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Widespread Sense mentioned.
“Whether or not tequila makes fish offended, shrimp on a treadmill are two initiatives that come to thoughts,” Sewell mentioned. “You comb by way of the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and different companies, and there are a number of weird-sounding research – at the least superficially.”
Many complaints exclude the issues the analysis is attempting to deal with, which could change how individuals understand its worth. Within the case of those new examples Musk cited, the cash went largely to analysis and educational establishments over a number of years to check animals to resolve well being issues in people.
Right here’s a more in-depth take a look at the main points behind the initiatives shorthanded on social media:
The $33m for ‘transgender monkey’ analysis? This distorts spending on HIV research
Loomis claimed $33.2m was spent on “transgender monkey analysis”. That’s false. It conflates spending on a monkey lab analysis website with a single research.
Paul’s 2023 report mentioned the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments spent $477,121 on a “transgender monkey research”.
The NIH awarded three initiatives $477,121 beginning in 2020 for analysis that included administering feminising hormone remedy to monkeys to check whether or not the treatment makes the monkeys extra prone to HIV. The research additionally examined how hormone remedy affected the monkeys’ response to HIV therapies.
Transgender ladies are at excessive threat of contracting HIV and account for disproportionate numbers of latest infections around the globe, the World Well being Group has mentioned.
The $33.2m spending determine refers to a monkey colony, however that’s not particularly for transgender analysis. The Put up and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, reported in 2023 that the monkey website has existed for the reason that Seventies and is house to about 3,500 rhesus monkeys which can be despatched to researchers engaged on vaccines and medical therapies.
The monkey website was within the information in November as a result of 43 of its monkeys escaped. As of this writing, the bulk had been recovered.
The $4.5m in 2020 for ‘alcoholic rats’ and bobcat urine? That’s flawed.
The Redheaded Libertarian account’s publish claims the federal government spent $4.5m in 2020 to “spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”. That was an actual research, but it surely was not the one factor the grants, which had been spent over a number of years, funded.
Paul’s 2020 Festivus report says researchers used $4.575m in grants from the NIH and the Division of Veterans Affairs “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”.
The underlying analysis aimed to check alcoholism in people with post-traumatic stress dysfunction. The cash went to Louisiana State College’s (LSU’s) Well being Sciences Heart to check the chemical processes behind alcoholism, most of it funded over a number of years by the Nationwide Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
An LSU Well being New Orleans spokesperson mentioned the grants totalled about $5.6m from 2014 to 2024. The purpose of the work is to enhance take care of individuals who endure from post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) and alcohol use dysfunction. This work has led to the invention of mind adjustments which will drive extreme alcohol use in individuals identified with PTSD.
One research examined post-traumatic stress avoidance in rats when uncovered to predator odour (bobcat urine) to higher perceive easy methods to deal with PTSD in people. The predator odour causes a trauma response within the rats, simulating trauma responses in people.
The $2.7m to check cats on a treadmill? Researchers sought human spinal twine therapies
The Redheaded Libertarian account talked about $2.7m for “finding out cats on a treadmill”. The quantity is appropriate, but it surely ignored the analysis’s intention of attempting to know spinal twine therapies for people.
The NIH gave about $2.7m in federal funding from 2018 to 2021 to a venture finding out the consequences of spinal twine accidents on cats’ strolling patterns.
Researchers within the US, Sweden and Russia collaborated on the analysis till it resulted in 2022.
In response to a venture abstract, the researchers studied neural processes concerned in a standard remedy for spinal twine accidents. The venture’s purpose was offering “a scientific foundation for enchancment of [epidural spinal cord]-stimulation therapies” to enhance mobility in people.
Researchers carried out surgical procedure on cats for the research, eradicating sections of their spinal cords. In a number of research, researchers noticed how the cats with severed spinal cords walked on treadmills.
In a single research of cats in Russia, researchers discovered it was simpler to stimulate ahead movement over backward movement when utilizing epidural spinal twine stimulation on the cats. One other research used transdermal stimulation, a unique remedy, and located the strategy helpful for “investigating new approaches of neurorehabilitation after spinal twine and mind harm and ailments”.
The $12m for monkeys on meth? Researchers studied sleep
The Redheaded Libertarian’s publish mentioned the federal government spent a “portion of $12M to check monkeys on meth”. That was considered one of dozens of research funded by Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse grants to check methods to deal with and forestall drug dependancy.
Paul’s 2023 report highlighted that research, which concerned giving methamphetamine to monkeys to check the drug’s results on sleep and insomnia.
The research lists 4 NIH grants as its funding supply. The funding from these grants over greater than 20 years totals near $12m, however the grants have supported a couple of research.
A kind of grants has funded a venture researching benzodiazepine use in rhesus monkeys since 1998. The venture has acquired federal funding practically yearly that has totalled greater than $7m as of 2024. Researchers have printed dozens of research related to that grant funding, based on a venture abstract on the NIH web site.
Portion of ‘$12m’ to check canine rectal temperature is unverified
The Redheaded Libertarian publish mentioned “a portion of $12M went to check canine rectal temperatures”. A researcher mentioned the “portion” amounted to borrowing a digicam for someday.
Paul’s report mentioned the Agriculture Division (USDA) awarded an unknown sum of cash to Southern Illinois College to check “canine rectal temperatures”.
The 2019 research discovered proof that contradicted the favored perception that canines with darker fur expertise larger thermal change when uncovered to daylight than canines with lighter fur as a result of their inner temperatures adjusted on the similar charge. Researchers measured rectal, gastrointestinal and floor temperatures.
A sentence within the research says it was partially supported by a USDA grant. One researcher, Erin Perry, informed PolitiFact that the USDA funding acknowledgement was required as a result of the research used a thermal digicam bought with a USDA grant for an unrelated venture and lent to the canine venture for someday. She mentioned no authorities funding was used for the canine research.
There was a human connection to this research. Perry mentioned heatstroke is the main explanation for operational- or training-related deaths in canines used for army, regulation enforcement, and search and rescue functions.
Specialists on medical analysis defend the work
Some focused researchers have taken criticism of their initiatives with a chuckle. Robert Kraut, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon College, studied the evolution of human facial expressions, which he mentioned was one of many first printed experiments “in what would ultimately turn into evolutionary psychology”. However in 1980, Senator William Proxmire awarded the Nationwide Institute for Psychological Well being a Golden Fleece Award for funding the analysis. Proxmire gave Golden Fleece Awards to public officers tongue in cheek for allegedly squandering public cash.
Kraut wrote that he put it on a T-shirt.
“Though my work was not practically as attractive because the analysis on class relationships in Peruvian brothels, carried out by an earlier Golden Fleece Award winner [van den Berghe and Primov, 1979], it did get media consideration,” Kraut wrote. “This may occasionally have been the primary time that non-specialists, apart from my spouse and mom, had ever learn considered one of my papers, and I gloried within the transient media consideration.”
Leaders from the American Psychological Affiliation and the Consortium of Social Science Associations wrote in a 2014 essay that politicians who assault such initiatives are overlooking analysis’s worth for fixing human issues.
Analysis associated to the venom of the Gila monster, a lizard, might as soon as have sounded fantastical. But it surely has a real-world affect.
Within the Nineties, researchers studied a hormone in Gila monster venom that helps the lizard regulate its blood sugar throughout hibernation, KFF, a US well being coverage organisation, wrote. Researchers then created an artificial model of the hormone, which led to a brand new class of medication, together with Ozempic, which the Meals and Drug Administration authorised to deal with diabetes however which has turn into fashionable as an off-label weight-loss drug.
“The Gila monster’s venom isn’t current in these medicine,” KFF wrote.
