I thought the strategy of skimming titles, mocking them, and then pretending that makes the political killing of research that has been approved by actual scientific bodies through a highly competitive process was discredited and thrown to the bin when it turned out Ozempic was dependent on one of these studies an earlier elected numbnut had publicly mocked in Congress.
I guess I was wrong.
But let’s ignore the idea that random commenter or random politico has a deeper understanding of what makes good research than the highly effective bodies with experts setup to do this. Let’s click the link for the study you actually complained about.
So here’s the first thing I see.
Start Date: Sep 1, 2019
End Date: Aug 31, 2025
Termination Date: May 9, 2025
Assuming equal outlays, you’re saving 4/60 * 2.8mm, so less than about $200k. Well, I guess 200k is a tiny fraction of $2.8mm but I guess that’s still a saving.
Oh wait, what’s this…there’s a link to USASpending.gov which is an official govt site that shows the actual outlays. Thats cool! And I can use the grant ID to see exactly what was done here. Nice!
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_1906595_4900
Oh, so that’s weird. Why does this show an end date of:
Aug 31, 2024!
That was last year!
I’m sure that was a mistake in the official website and the propaganda tool you linked to that supposedly gets its data from here somehow magically corrected that info, so let’s not be hasty and assume they made a chump of you by outright lying to you.
But what’s this. It gives actual amounts.
> Outlayed Amount
$1,795,710.00
Obligated Amount
$2,821,709.00
Oh, so it’s not $2.8mm in savings. It’s about $1mm in savings.
But what’s this…we can see the actual transactions.
Of the 4 outlays, the last outlay was made in Aug 2022, and there were no outlays in 2023 or 2024 despite the grant schedule showing all the $2.8mm should have been given out by Aug 2022.
It’s almost like the research, which completed in Aug 2024, didn’t need the entire $2.8mm that was allocated to it, and being legitimate researchers rather than liars and charlatans, only took the money they needed and left the $1mm for the government to use elsewhere.
Looks like the liars and charlatans are the people who created that table to make it look like they saved $2.8mm when in reality they saved $0, and the researches or this study you criticize actually saved the govt $1mm.
There’s no easier chump than someone who wants to be a chump.