As editor of Federal grants are always interesting -- Sen. William Proxmire made a reputation for himself lampooning them with his "Golden Fleece" awards, and newspaper humorist Dave Barry has enjoyed years of material thanks to federal pork projects.
I can't help it, but that's the first thing I thought of when I read this story from Maine.biz, a Web site for a Portland, Maine-based business newspaper.
The story, "Potato plastics group pushes for R&D support," notes that a group called the Sustainable Bioplastics Council of Maine, made up of manufacturers, agricultural groups, nonprofit organizations and University of Maine researchers, is seeking $1.25 million in federal funds to help commercialize plastics made from potatoes and wood chips.
The groups want to use potato starch to make PLA resin.
The story notes that supporters polled 1,000 businesses in Maine that use plastic, and "more than 90 percent of the respondents says they would use bioplastics if they were available, and two-thirds says they would pay a premium for plastics made from Maine potatoes."
That's an interesting statistic. I wonder how many of those people currently pay a premium for french fries made from Maine potatoes.
Perhaps the good folks in Idaho better get their congressional delegation on the phone, pronto.
Comments (1)
Here's my take on this and pretty much all other "laughable" research supported by the government. Don't look at the input - look at the output.
1) Despite the effort of legions of managers, research can't be "managed". You can't control what will be discovered and what won't. So while the effort is "potatoes + sweat --> PLA", you may instead end up with "potatoes + sweat --> something else". That "something else" may be a total failure as far as the processors in Maine are concerned, but it might be of great interest to another researcher in Minnesota.
2) Regardless of any outcome, you are still training one or more Ph.D.'s, who will then take high paying jobs. When I left grad school and got my first job, the taxes on the check were equal to what I used to live on. You don't have to be too sharp with the numbers to see that that is a great deal for the investors, even if the research is a total bust and even if the Ph.D. does nothing productive the rest of their career.
Posted by John Spevacek | March 22, 2010 10:04 AM
Posted on March 22, 2010 10:04