So I guess Rand Paul hit back on the whole defunding of CDC, NIH, etc.

[TlalocW]

By making fun of what they spent their money on including whether chimps prefer to throw their crap with their right or left hand, etc. The only arguments against that I can think of is EVERY entity - government or business - spends money on stupid stuff, but I also know that republicans tend to drill down to locate the weirdest thing a study has to say and then cast that as the reason for the study - for instance, the study could have been something about pathogen transmissions amongst upper primates, but noting the preferred crap-flinging hand is what he focuses on. I can't find anything on what he's talking about. Anyone with better fact-checking skills/resources than I have got anything?

TlalocW

[louis-t]

1. Well, knowing Rand Paul, he probably plagarized it.

[Pholus]

2. It's been this way ever since the "Golden Fleece" awards.

Take a legit study, take it out of context, then call it waste.

Brilliant when you think about it. A person can try to debunk it, but nobody actually cares about the nuance.

Plays real well with the anti-tax crowd.

[procon]

3. Republican are a simple people, easily amused

and like adolescent boys, they are easily amused by stories featuring various bodily orifices and the materials that comes out of them.


From an article on the research study in question, evidently it found that the better a chimp could throw and actually hit the intended target, indicated a more highly developed left brain hemisphere, which is also, not coincidentally, this is where speech processing occurs in humans. Such findings led the term to suggest that the ability to throw is, a precursor to speech development in human beings and might be useful in treating people with disabilities.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intelligence.html#jCp:

Citation: “The neural and cognitive correlates of aimed throwing in chimpanzees: a magnetic resonance image and behavioural study on a unique form of social tool use.” By William D. Hopkins, Jamie L. Russell and Jennifer A. Schaeffer. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Vol. 367 No. 1585, January 12, 2012.


"The researchers were especially interested in relationships between throwing, cognition and lateralization, or the way certain activities are concentrated in the left or right hemispheres of our brains. Language processing occurs in the left side, which also controls our right hands; and most people use their right hands to throw, as do chimpanzees."


http://www.wired.com/2011/11/chimp-throwing/

[Johonny]

4. almost all stupid shit

turns out to be sound scientific projects that if someone bothered to read to proposal and papers produced would understand the research.

99.9% of the shit they fund is so dead obvious they don't say a word. The 0.1% even if it were graft or stupid is a vastly low percent of the total and shows their peer review proposal process works. Usually when you actually read the 0.1% it isn't as stupid as it sounds. Defunding research in America makes no sense for: health, national security, economically, environmentally etc.. it is stupid. There is no defense for science austerity other than Rand Paul is stupid. But we knew that already.