Overview

Senator Jeff Flake Presents Twenty Questions Government Studies That Will Leave You Scratching Your Head METHODOLOGY Specific dollar amounts expended to support each study were not available for the projects profiled in this report. Most were conducted as parts of more extensive research funded with government grants or financial support. The costs provided, therefore, represent the total amount of the grant or grants from which the study was supported and not the precise amount spent on the individual studies. This is not intended to imply or suggest other research supported by these grants was wasteful, unnecessary or without merit. The studies included were supported with federal assistance awarded during the last decade. Some, but not all, are still active. RECOMMENDATIONS Greater access to publicly supported research would benefit all Americans and promote the advancement of scientific discovery and understanding as well as transparency and accountability. ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have led the way in supporting America's leadership role in the sciences as well as making information about research grants available to the public in searchable online databases. Other agencies, such as NASA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture also have searchable databases. Every agency not currently doing so should provide the public access to unclassified research and development. For efficiency, those agencies that do not administer such a website can utilize Federal RePORTER, which provides a database of scientific awards from various federal agencies. This database promotes transparency and engages the public, the research community, and federal agencies to describe federal science research investments and provide empirical data for science policy. Users can search across multiple fields in both the Smart Search and Advanced Search functions--including across agencies or fiscal years, by the award's project leader, or by a text search of a project's title, terms, or abstracts. 25 IMPROVING TRACKING OF COSTS The lack of more precise accounting of how federal research grants are spent underscores the need for legislation or executive guidance requiring all recipients of federal R&D funding to disclose the total amount spent on each study and how those funds were spent. PROVIDING ACCESS TO FINDINGS Despite being published in journals or presented at conferences and scientific meetings, many taxpayer funded studies remain unavailable to the public. Furthermore, the abstracts of the research grants listed in agency databases are often times vague. Including the text of findings either published in journals or presented at conferences and meetings along with the costs of the studies in the databases is essential for taxpayers to understand how federal research dollars are being spent to advance science

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