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The Golden Fleece Award (1975–1988) was an award given to public officials in the United States for wasting public money. Its name is a reference to the Order of the Golden Fleece and a play on the transitive verb fleece, as in charging excessively for goods or services. United States Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, began to issue the Golden Fleece Award in 1975 in monthly press releases. The Washington Post once referred to the award as "the most successful public relations device in politics today." Robert Byrd, a Democratic Senator from West Virginia, referred to the award as being "as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and filibusters."
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Award
Proxmire issued the award monthly until 1988, when he retired from the Senate. In total, 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 the requests, saying he might continue to issue the award 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 of the Golden Fleece Award, behavioral scientist Ronald Hutchinson, sued Proxmire for libel, requesting $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 his 2014 book Creativity, Inc., Pixar President Ed Catmull spoke of the "chilling effect on research" The Golden Fleece Award exerts. He argues that if you fund thousands of research projects, some will have measurable, positive impacts and that others will not. It is not possible to know in advance what the results of every research project would be or whether the results 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 society's progress.
Award winners
Winners of the Golden Fleece Award included governmental organizations, including 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:
I object to this not only because no one—not even the National Science Foundation—can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I'm sure that even if they spend $84 million or $84 billion they wouldn't get an answer that anyone would believe. I'm also against it because I don't want the answer.
I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right on top of the things we don't want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa.
The Federal Aviation Administration was named for spending $57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, paying special attention to the "length of the buttocks" and how their knees were arranged when they were seated.
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 were used to create sterile screwworms that were released into the wild and eliminated this major cattle parasite from North and Central America and reducing 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: