Taxes Fund Shrimp On Treadmill Study.

Pacific University Professor David Sholnick has a made a career out of forcing animals to run on treadmills for scientific research. Unfortunately for Dr. Sholnick, he’s also made himself a target for conservatives and animal rights activists who see his expensive animal studies as waste of taxpayer dollars.

Republican Senator Ton Coburn (R-OK) is taking aim at the National Science Foundation and their funding of experiments like Dr. Sholnick’s. The professor spent $500,000 getting shrimp (and now lizards) to run on treadmills. The shrimp forced to run on a treadmill supposedly provided his team with valuable scientific information but mostly served as a viral video on YouTube.

Sholnick’s team was trying to simulate the energy a wild shrimp would exert in order to study how a deadly bacteria affected the animal. He claims that his finding had the potential to help humans if it was ever discovered that the bacteria in the shrimp was transferable.

We can debate the importance of the $3 billion in taxpayer money that goes to the National Science Foundation every year because I’m sure some of it goes to important research but the fact remains that this $500,000 was seriously blown.