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From: norman@sdcsla.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Senator William Proxmire and The Golden Fleece Awards
Message-ID: <615@sdcsla.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jul-84 07:14:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsla.615
Posted: Mon Jul 23 07:14:45 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 19:46:49 EDT
References: <915@ulysses.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Cognitive Science Lab
Lines: 47

An open letter to Gary Perlman:

Damn it, Gary, the Golden Fleece awards are outrageous.   Proxmire has
done great harm to the scientific research system.  He choses research to
ridicule solely on the title.  He has given the award to some very
outstanding pieces of research.   He makes science sound silly and petty,
with no understanding of what is going on.    He is especially critical of
research involving animals, especially social behavior and animals.  Yet
some of our best understanding of social interaction and comparative
anthropology comes from the very studies he has ridiculed.  His
constituents may think he is wonderful for exposing studies on "Smiling
Behavior in the Baboon," but if you look behind the title to the
research, it has often turned out to be absolutely first rate and important.
In fact, it is fortunate that Proxmire's methods are so slipshod that he has
criticized some of the best science around:  it makes it easy to defend.

The main result has been to make NSF and NIH grant administrators timid and
conservative, hesitating to fund good research if it seemed at all unusual.
I have been asked to change the titles of my proposed research ("So
Proxmire's people won't pick on it").  Not the research -- everyone liked
that -- just the titles (which is all Proxmire ever looks at). 

Yes, some of his exposes are deserved, but he is a wild shooter, and he
does not do the careful research on his targets that would be required to
substantiate his criticisms.  He simply uses his senatorial exemption from
libel.  I have donated several hundred dollars to help scientists fight his
awards --- in court.  Mind you, the scientists won.   

Yes, there is serious wastes, and yes, not all scientific studies that are
funded should have been, but random, wild potshots of the sort Proxmire
takes do more harm than whatever little good results.   Even when he is
correct, his methods are so poor that the people in administrative
positions do not take him seriously.  I have talked with senate staff
members who say that his awards are not respected in congress: they think
of them as publicity, not as serious.

(I guess we need to give our graduate students some lessons about politics
before they get out of here.  We used to think they couldn't do harm if
they were only going to ATT.  I guess we were wrong.)

Don Norman

 Donald A. Norman     (ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcsla!norman or norman@nprdc)
 Institute for Cognitive Science C-015
 University of California, San Diego
 La Jolla, California 92093