From 1975 to 1988 Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin created the monthly “Golden Fleece Awards,” which was given to federally funded programs that Proxmire considered to be superfluous. This award was often given to obscure or peculiar scientific research that was considered by Proxmire to be superfluous and unnecessary. This attitude, which states that unique and arguably odd scientific research is a wasteful use of federal funds, is still a common belief today. In response to this negative attitude the Golden Goose Awards were created in 2012 by: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, The Breakthrough Institute, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, the Task Force on American Innovation, The Science Coalition, and the United for Medical Research with the support of multiple congressional members, organizations, and universities. It was created to recognize federally funded idiosyncratic scientific projects with huge benefits and socially significant applications. These awards are meant to highlight, that like the proverbial goose with the golden egg, some of the most miraculous and valuable ideas and innovations can come from the most unlikely sources or inquiries.
Awardees can be nominated by anyone other than the nominee themselves as long as they meet the nominee criteria, which states that all nominated projects must: be “Projects that resulted in transformational scientific or technological changes that were unforeseen at the time the original research was conducted; and/or Projects that may have appeared unusual, obscure or which sounded “funny” or whose value could have been questioned at the time the research was originally conducted; and/or Research discoveries that were serendipitous in nature – where the discovery resulted from observations or research that initially focused in an entirely different direction at the time it was initiated and funded.”
Past winners of the Golden Goose awards include projects on Rat Massage research which helps premature babies survive and thrive, Gila venom which was used to produce new diabetes medications, and work with green fluorescent protein derived from Jellyfish which has proven to have many significant medical applications. One of the 2015 Winners of the Golden Goose awards were Joel Cohen and Christopher Small, who founded hypsographic demography, the study of how human populations are distributed in regards to altitude. Hypsographic demography can be mapped on a global scale and is now used by a plethora of companies in multiple industries from Frito-Lay to Intel to analyze customer bases living at different altitudes and product manipulation to meet the needs of those customers, as well as other scientists studying things like distribution of disease in correlation with altitude. The creation of hypsographic demography won a Golden Goose Award because it combined the knowledge of scientists from often marginalized research fields and created a demographic mapping technique with socially relevant applications.
The implications and benefits to obscure and odd scientific research is often overlooked or misunderstood by the general population. Therefore, federal funding that helps maintain this research is subject to ridicule. However, this research has shown that it can have huge human and economic benefits and despite its initial appearance, it can have a significant societal impact. The Golden Goose Awards serve to recognize this impact and demonstrate the value of this type of research. As 2015 Golden Goose Winner, Joel Cohen, put it, “Pursue something beautiful and true, and often it will prove useful.”