Stimulus Dysfunction
Bringing new meaning to, um, stimulus funding is this tale from San Francisco, where researchers were awarded upwards of $1.5 million in federal stimulus money for “studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history.”
NBC Bay Area talked to the University of California at San Francisco, the institution that received the grant. “Does it make you wonder a little bit, stimulus money for a study like this?” Kovaleski asked Jeff Sheehy, who works at the UCSF Aids Research Center. “No it doesn’t,” he answered. “Because to my mind we save money if we get better health outcomes.”
According to the grant, a good portion of the study will “improve the accuracy of responses to questions,” specifically questions about a person’s sexual behavior.
“Playing devil’s advocate,” Kovaleski said to Sheehy, “Do taxpayers need to spend $1.2 million dollars to figure this out?”
“The judgment wasn’t one that I was asked,” Sheehy replied.
The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit discovered that for $1.2 million dollars, taxpayers funded a study that included 200 videotaped interviews at $6,000 per interview.
Kovaleski asked Sheehy to justify the spending.
“I think the average person is going to look at $1.2 million dollars to interview 200 people and say, “Wow!’ ” Sheehy said, defending the study. “I understand people could look at it and have issues but this is research.”
Scott Amey, general council for the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, was less than impressed with the San Fran project’s job-creation, which recall was the purported goal of all those stimulus dollars.
Kovaleski then asked about jobs. “How many jobs did this $1.26 million dollars create?”
“Well I can’t really say,” Sheehy said. “There were 11 researchers hired on the job, two consultants. Well I can’t say. This has not been evaluated for job creation.”
The number Sheehy quoted during an interview with NBC Bay Area did not match information on recovery.gov, the government’s website for stimulus funds. According to the site, the grant produced 0.85 jobs.
“It does make you scratch your head and wonder,” Amey said. “Wait a second, taxpayer dollars went to a sex study that barely funded less than one person?”
Well, yes. Yes, they did.
Wonderful.
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