Throwback Thursday: NSF Spent $50K Studying Congressional Faces
In 2011, the National Science Foundation granted researchers at UCLA $50,000 — $69,000 in 2023 dollars — to study the faces of members of Congress to determine if Republicans and Democrats look different.
A UCLA press release explained that researchers fed a computer pictures of 434 members of the 111th House of Representatives, which analyzed features like the shape of the jaw, the location of eyebrows, and the placement of cheek bones. This data allowed researchers to score different faces as more traditionally masculine or feminine.
Researchers founds that “Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are more likely to be Republican than Democrat, and the correlation increases the more conservative the lawmaker's voting record.” Additionally, they noted “Female politicians with less stereotypically feminine facial features were more likely to be Democrats, and the more liberal their voting record.”
The findings were so strong that undergraduates in some cases were able to predict what political affiliation a congressional member had.
While these findings may be interesting or amusing, they’re hardly important to medicine or science at large. Former Sen. Jeff Flake highlighted this study as an example of waste in his report, “20 Questions: Government Studies That Will Leave You Scratching Your Head.”
The NSF defended its funding of this project, claiming the study promised to “significantly advance how we ‘see’ others.” That is hardly a compelling defense of spending $50,000.
Government waste is a perpetual threat to economic efficiency and responsible spending, and lawmakers need to stay vigilant to rein in ridiculous studies like this.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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