Feds Shell Out $438K To Study Whether Drunken Hookups Increase Chance of HIV

You can't fix stupid and no not even alcohol could make someone as stupid as the people who funded this study.

It's not wasteful. Now, if that money was allocated for...say...veterans benefits and was instead used on this study, that would be a misappropriation and would be bad. This isn't so bad.

I'm sure you read over every detail of that proposal too, but in case someone missed it; $437,739 over 3 years is $145,913.

Now, the NiH has a budget of $30.3 Billion, in grants annually. So we're looking at a fraction of a fraction that you want to call wasteful. Furthermore, you only call is wasteful because you don't see a reason for it. I mean...you're not a psychologist or a sociologist. What's the point in research and studies? How much money is this going to bring back? That's all that matters to you, how much more can we get the government to act like a business?

a reply to: links234

It tells me that the NIH gets too damn much money and needs their budget trimmed.

a reply to: links234

Please, do something for me, go to the text of the COTUS and find me the part that justifies spending money to fund some social scientists in their study of drunken hook ups. How does that benefit the nation? At what point do you begin to think this is a good thing for the populace as a whole?

a reply to: ketsuko

Art. 1, Sec. 8: The Congress shall have power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...

Or, straight from the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Jump forward to Public Law 89-507 stating the objective of the National Science Foundation;

To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare;

Now, maybe you can read through the constitution and tell me where it explicitly states that the federal government can't fund research and science...or what they can't fund in general.

originally posted by: JIMC5499
a reply to: links234

It tells me that the NIH gets too damn much money and needs their budget trimmed.

There is an awful lot of NIH grant money going to sexual "studies". Here is another one that will make the taxpayer fume:

“Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina. The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk

a reply to: queenofswords

Right...because we shouldn't know anything about sex.

We expect findings from this study to provide a blueprint for developing a venue-based HIV prevention intervention for these settings, which could be more fully developed and tested in a subsequent study.

I mean, if you can explain why gay men choose to get drunk and go to high-risk areas to have unprotected sex with likely HIV-infected men maybe you could throw together a study and maybe, just maybe, you could help people to not contract HIV in the first place.

originally posted by: links234
a reply to: queenofswords

Right...because we shouldn't know anything about sex.

We expect findings from this study to provide a blueprint for developing a venue-based HIV prevention intervention for these settings, which could be more fully developed and tested in a subsequent study.

I mean, if you can explain why gay men choose to get drunk and go to high-risk areas to have unprotected sex with likely HIV-infected men maybe you could throw together a study and maybe, just maybe, you could help people to not contract HIV in the first place.

Surely you jest. Unbelievable. What answer, half a million dollars later, do you think we will have to the "why" question? Duh...maybe it is because alcohol causes people of all stripes to lose their inhibitions and throw caution to the wind. But, hey....somebody got to go to Buenos Aires and spend American taxpayer money "studying" drunken gay men!