God, this sort of ignorant nonsense infuriates me:

If you had $147,000 to spend on scientific research, would you rather try to find a cure for cancer or see whether women get sexually aroused while watching pornography?

Or how about this: How much would you spend to learn whether men or women are more likely to sleep with a stranger?

Or maybe you want to learn whether athlete’s muscles feel more relaxed after getting a massage. Seems kind of obvious, right?

Each of those questions has been studied by academics, and in most cases taxpayers have foot the bill, sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

“Oftentimes academic researchers will get government grants to do things that you’ve got to wonder: Why are they doing that?” said Merrill Goozner, director of the integrity in science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “There’s plenty of research out there that doesn’t need to be done, and why somebody funds it is one of the great mysteries of life.”

This is an agency that has funding of tens of billions of dollars. It’s funded research is peer-approved (obviously a bad things since 535 lawyers clearly know better which issues should be studied). Read the comments for lots of insight. It’s heartening to see people not cowed by this garbage.

I can think of perfectly valid reasons to study all of these things. Studying porn’s effect on women may provide insight into understanding female sexuality, a subject woefully understudied. Americans spend billions of dollars on massages and it is of scientific interest to see if this actually works.

But never mind. Let’s just publish a hysterical article.