Examples of governments funding pseudoscience

[mr friendly guy]

I recently came across an article talking about Chinese funding for scientific research (generally talking about their aspirations and increase % of GDP the funding will take) and it stated that they gave 4 million to Nobel prize winner Luc Montagnier to study "electromagnetic waves produced in DNA in water."

Ok, when I saw that my first thought was WTF? What is this supposed to show. A short while of googling I came across this.
homeopathy shit which implies that Montagnier's work supported homeopathy. To be fair from other articles it doesn't quite support everything they say, but it does lend credence of the water memory hypothesis excuse homeopaths use. Ironically the water memory schmitck originally came from fellow french scientist Benveniste.

For those who want to read more, PZ Meyers explains whats wrong with it.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 ... elieve.php

I sure hope those 4 million is 4 million yuan rather than 4 million USD, although thats just a tiny portion of China's research budget.

So the question is, are there any more obvious examples of governments funding pseudoscience. Off the cuff I can think of the US military spending a few million into psychic research and more recently, the Indian military studying the metabolism of a holy man touched by a goddess who hasn't needed to eat for "years."

[Lord of the Abyss]

Lysenkoism in the USSR comes to mind. Not just funded but outright mandated at pain of death by the Soviets and Stalin himself.

[Broomstick]

So the question is, are there any more obvious examples of governments funding pseudoscience. Off the cuff I can think of the US military spending a few million into psychic research and more recently, the Indian military studying the metabolism of a holy man touched by a goddess who hasn't needed to eat for "years."

The thing is, after a few million the US military figured out ESP was bogus and stopped the research. Likewise, the US government in recent years funded research on "natural" cures but those pesky scientists keep concluding, based on evidence (or lack of it) most of them don't work. In a sane world that would be the end of the matter but the advocates for this stuff just won't take no as an answer. They always want another study.

[mr friendly guy]

Do these advocates get another study? It occurs to me in this current economic climate they most probably aren't.

Back to the OP I hope that someone in the Chinese government (or any government for that matter) realise that homeopathy is bullshit and stop funding Montagnier's experiment (or any homeopathy or pseudoscience experiment), especially given that Chinese scientists have themselves politely pointed out his proposal is "controversial." If only they had someone like Penn Jillette or Richard Dawkins to call it bullshit.

[mr friendly guy]

Oh, how could I forget the hafnium bomb?

http://www.damninteresting.com/half-sci ... ium-bombs/

http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the ... r-was.html

To be fair, the basic idea that if you can somehow get the energy decay to be released all at once from hafnium (as opposed to the 31 year half life it normally takes) seems to make sense. The problem was that the method they tried to use to get the energy release all at once was dubious and everytime the results failed they just kept on shifting the goal posts. That is they said those failed experiments weren't doing <insert minutiae> correct and kept on adding different criteria when the experiments kept on failing, just like how Cretenists keep on shifting the goal posts.

Of course, by this stage, the Pentagon had sank millions of dollars into the hafnium bomb.

[Broomstick]

I don't know if it counts as pseudoscience or not, but during WWII the US funded experiments in using bats to deliver various nasty things. Was not very successful.

On the other hand, the US Navy dolphin training program has, apparently, turned out to be very useful. Much to the chagrin of various "animal rights" advocates.

[mr friendly guy]

Good point. Generally the fact that something doesn't mesh with reality doesn't necessarily make it pseudoscience, it could be incorrect science or bad science. I take Mike's definition of using scientific sounding jargon to describe very unscientific ideas. Presumably by unscientific ideas we mean two forms 1) goes against scientific methodology and 2) against known scientific principles / theories / laws (the corollary is that to go against existing theorems successfully you need evidence).

The problem arises when failure to use proper scientific method could be construed as bad science rather than pseudoscience. Generally a pseudoscientist has already decided the conclusion, eg Creationists, and then looking for evidence to fit their beliefs and discounting any evidence to the contrary. This is the opposite of what a scientists does, looking at observation (the evidence) and then deriving a conclusion from it.

I think the example of the Hafnium bomb is nudging the grey area. While their initial "successful" experiments which was not replicated by subsequent scientists could be put down to bad science, failure to acknowledge that the lack of repetition by several other scientists suggests you made the error, is starting to go against the scientific method.

[Duckie]

I don't know if they actually funded anything related to it, but various governments in africa- zimbabwe and south africa come to mind, have at times officially endorsed AIDS-denialism.

In the US, DARPA's entire mission is to throw money at shit that may or may not even be plausible just in case it works. If there's a 1 in a million chance psychic powers exist, but they'd give a massive advantage to the US, it's DARPA's job to give them money to see. So it's sort of by design- maybe not in psychic powers, but I'm sure in various other projects such a scattergun approach has paid off. (Assuming you enjoy spending wastefully huge amounts on military R&D and appreciate the results, mind).

Also, it's a surprising action from China to fund such research, although at least it's such a tiny sum of money that it's probably just that whenever you spend a lot of money on things, some of it will go to wasteful things by accident. China has in recent years been curtailing funding and pushing against traditional chinese medicine, so I guess technically they're also invested in other medical pseudosciences even if they're reducing it (while, naturally, applying science to TCM to pick out the actually useful herbs and medicine)*. One of the slogans was really great- It was just "Respect scientific knowledge".

*The number of people who, for example, say, "china grinds up tiger dicks for medicine" surprises me. The Chinese government doesn't do any such thing- various chinese people do. And indeed, the last guy to kill an endangered tiger in china got sentenced to 10 years in prison. Uh, granted, he killed the last of that species of tiger in china, but, you know, at least they made it illegal while it counted.

[Serafina]

Well, unlike plenty of westerners, the Chinese KNOW what "traditional chinese medicine" actually is: Folk medicine striped of outright dangerous practices. But it's still just folk medicine and there's nothing special about it. The reason they funded it to begin with is because it was a way to build up at least some form of medical system, at that time introducing wester medicine just wasn't viable for several financial and political reasons. Neither of which should be the case anymore, so it'd make sense to push against TCM.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I don't know if it counts as pseudoscience or not, but during WWII the US funded experiments in using bats to deliver various nasty things. Was not very successful.

I'm pretty sure Project X-Ray (bat bombs) had a successful field test, but they were unable to implement it before the end of the war.

[evilsoup]

I'm sure there was a story a while ago that said you can get homeopathy on the NHS, I'll see if I can dig it up.
BAM - £4 million a year, which supports four dedicated homeopathic 'hospitals' and subsidises prescriptions. All out of UK taxes.

[mr friendly guy]

Well, unlike plenty of westerners, the Chinese KNOW what "traditional chinese medicine" actually is: Folk medicine striped of outright dangerous practices. But it's still just folk medicine and there's nothing special about it. The reason they funded it to begin with is because it was a way to build up at least some form of medical system, at that time introducing wester medicine just wasn't viable for several financial and political reasons. Neither of which should be the case anymore, so it'd make sense to push against TCM.

The only TCM I know of which has proved useful, was artemeter for the treatment of malaria. So research isn't totally wasted. However I suspect they won't get a lot of bank for your buck, and maybe in the future further research will have to be done by private organisations.

I'm sure there was a story a while ago that said you can get homeopathy on the NHS, I'll see if I can dig it up.
BAM - £4 million a year, which supports four dedicated homeopathic 'hospitals' and subsidises prescriptions. All out of UK taxes.

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about this. So it seems the UK wasted even more money than the Chinese on homeopathy shit.