RALEIGH -- Local academics are in turns miffed, bemused and stung by ridicule from two U.S. senators who cited their university research among the 100 most wasteful stimulus-funded projects in the country.
Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma highlighted eight projects in North Carolina among those funded by the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The local projects received between $144,541 and $770,856 in stimulus funds for research on monkeys taking cocaine, post-menopausal women practicing yoga and elderly people playing computer games, among others.
Many of these studies were selected for federal grants for peer-reviewed research in a competitive application process. The professional honor the professors experienced contrasts sharply with the scorn their work has received from a pair of senators.
"Total shock," was the reaction of Anne McLaughlin, an assistant professor of psychology at N.C. State University who is overseeing a four-year study on the benefits of video games for the elderly. "Me? Really? Nationally? I mean, who doesn't want to help older adults maintain their independence?"
The purpose of the N.C. State video-gaming study is to collect data that will lead to the development of games designed to improve memory and mental functioning in elderly adults. By the time it's over in 2013, the study will have tested 160 people on the Nintendo Wii Boom Blox, each playing 1 hour a day for 15 days while they're hooked up to skin sensors that measure perspiration.
Each participant takes a 2-1/2-hour test on cognitive ability before and after playing the video games. All 50 participants tested so far are in Raleigh.
McLaughlin said video simulations are used by pilots, soldiers and others for advanced training, and similar technologies can be developed for the benefit of ordinary civilians. The stimulus grant pays for part of her salary, part of a colleague's salary, two full-time graduate students and three research assistants, she said.
"The way that grants work is they support the university," McLaughlin said. "There's no way a university could survive just on tuition."
Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem got the dubious honor of three citations on the list. The university is using a $144,541 grant to test the effect of cocaine on monkeys, a $294,958 grant to measure the benefits of yoga to control hot flashes in post-menopausal women, and a $266,505 grant to put on science education workshops for journalists.
Crazed monkeys?
The senators' report derided the simian subjects of the cocaine study as "drug-crazed monkeys."
University spokeswoman Bonnie Davis demurred: "This is good science and good research that helps millions of people," she said.
NCSU's Insect Museum received $253,123 to buy new bug-storage cabinets and to create an outreach program. The museum is open to the public by appointment only and gets as few as several dozen visitors some years. It is home to about 1.5 million bugs (all dead), specializing in cicadas, leaf hoppers, tree hoppers and aphids.
The senators' report noted mockingly that the museum features an annual Hexapod Haiku Challenge and plans to use some of the stimulus money to develop insect trading cards modeled on baseball cards.
The money paid for four students or recent grads to maintain the museum's database and one graduate student a semester for four semesters to study curation and other topics, museum director and entomology professor Andy Deans said.
Now folks are looking
Deans said his first reaction to seeing his museum on the list of stimulus duds was to be defensive. Then he realized the two senators did more for his outreach goals than any stimulus grant could have done to draw public attention to bug researchers toiling in obscurity. "I'm grateful, actually," Deans said. "In many ways, it's a plus for us because it highlights our research here."
