Golden Fleece Award
The Golden Fleece Award (1975–1988) was a tongue-in-cheek award given to public officials in the United States for squandering public money. Its name is sardonically taken from the actual Order of the Golden Fleece, a prestigious chivalric award created in the late-15th Century. It is a play on the transitive verb "fleece", or charging excessively for goods or services. United States Senator William Proxmire, Democrat from Wisconsin, began to issue the Golden Fleece Award in 1975 in monthly press releases. "The Washington Post" referred to the award as "the most successful public relations device in  politics today". Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, referred to the award as being "as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and filibusters". Award. William Proxmire, a United States Senator who represented the Democratic Party from Wisconsin, issued the award monthly from 1975 until 1988. He issued 168 Golden Fleece Awards. Though some members of the United States House of Representatives asked Proxmire's permission to continue the award, he declined, saying he might continue to issue them as a private citizen. Other organizations patterned their own "Golden Fleece Awards" after Proxmire's. The Taxpayers for Common  Sense, a nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization, gave Proxmire their lifetime achievement award in 1999, and revived the Golden Fleece Award in 2000. Proxmire served as an honorary chairman of the organization. One winner, behavioral scientist Ronald Hutchinson, sued Proxmire for $8 million in damages in 1976. Proxmire claimed that his statements about Hutchinson's research were protected by the Speech or Debate Clause of the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled, in "Hutchinson v. Proxmire", that the protection of speech and debate of lawmakers in the Constitution did not shield Proxmire from liability  for defamatory statements made outside of formal congressional proceedings. The case was later settled out of court. Proxmire continued to present the award following the suit. Criticism. In 2012 several organizations created the Golden Goose Award, celebrating federally-funded scientists doing basic research with benefits to society or humanity. In his 2014 book "Creativity, Inc.", Pixar President Ed Catmull spoke of the "chilling effect on research" The Golden Fleece Award exerts. He argues that when you fund thousands of research projects, some have measurable, positive impacts and that others don't. It is not possible to predict what the results  of every research project would be or whether they would have value. He further argues that failure in research is essential and that fear of failure would distort the way researchers choose projects, which would ultimately impede progress. Award winners. Winners of the Golden Fleece Award included governmental organizations like the United States Department of Defense, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service; research projects have been particularly well represented. The National Science Foundation (NSF) won the first Golden Fleece Award for spending $84,000 on a study on love. Proxmire reasoned that: The Federal Aviation Administration was named  for spending $57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, that included the "distance from knee to knee while sitting", and "the politeal [sic] length of the buttocks." He also gave the award to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for their Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) program, supporting the scientific search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Proxmire later withdrew his opposition to the SETI program. It is widely believed he gave the award to a study of the sex life of the screwworm fly, the results of which led scientists to create sterile screwworms that  were released into the wild and eliminated this major cattle parasite from North and Central America, and reduced the cost of beef and dairy products across the globe. However, there is no evidence for this claim in the archives of the Award held by the Wisconsin Historical Society. Furthermore, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded research on the sex life of the screwworm fly took place in the 1930s through 1950s, long before the Golden Fleece era of the 1970s and 80s, when Proxmire largely targeted contemporary research. The erroneous claim seems to stem from a speech by a  former Director of the National Science Foundation, who stated that Proxmire gave the award to an NSF grant entitled, "The Sexual Behavior of the Screwworm Fly," and later "freely admitted that the study of the sex life of the screwworm fly had been of major significance to progress in this important field." Other award winners included: