Commentary
For many years, there was a reliable, amusing symbol of wasteful government spending: shrimp on a treadmill.
In the mid-2000s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded an experiment to test how bacterial infection would impact the mobility of certain crustaceans, and researchers did it by putting shrimp on a literal treadmill. For further research, the Grice Marine Laboratory at the University of Charleston received $559,681. Videos of the shrimp at the metaphorical gym became a YouTube sensation, but despite ridicule, up to $1.3 million in funding continued into 2018.
At least it was a visual we could all look at and have a chuckle. As part of his legacy of fighting government waste, the legendary U.S. senator the late Dr. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) made the shrimp famous in a 2011 report (pdf)….