"Federal funds are often disbursed to researchers. What is disturbing here is that Economic Stimulus funds were spent on a climate researcher who was already employed. There's no stimulation in this "stimulus"."<p>Sure that guy was employed. But assuming his corner of academia works like the rest of academia there are a lot of other people who are now not unemployed. See researchers (Ph.D's) are more like project managers. They hire grad students, interns, staff, etc to do the actual work. The phds just just supervise, put their names on papers, etc.<p>Now, when this grant was awarded the researcher probably had a secure job. All the people I just mentioned however, were subject to cutbacks. Further depending on specifics, a job or two may have been created.<p>For a similar thing I know of first hand, we were awarded a grant out of stimulus money. I got to keep my job. Several grad students got to keep their appointments (and not require student loans). We may be hiring a staff member or two. The official PI (principle investigators) on the grant all have tenure.  I don't know how you count "works", but a job saved is about the same as creating a different job instead by my reckoning.