The shrimps on treadmills study didn&#x27;t cost a fortune, that was ridiculous and dishonest conservative demogogueing over it with fictitious accounting.<p>It&#x27;s like when a politician will say &quot;This government project spent $1 billion to build a highway, and only produced 1000 jobs, at a cost of $1 million per job!&quot; without looking at the other thing the project produced: a new highway!<p>The shrimp treadmill cost only $47 to make.(<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chronicle.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;conversation&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;13&#x2F;how-a-47-shrimp-treadmill-became-a-3-million-political-plaything&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chronicle.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;conversation&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;13&#x2F;how-a-47-...</a>) and was trying to figure out a way to determine food safety, you know, like whether the shrimp we&#x27;re eating are diseased.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure if you total up the money spent on number theorists over the past several decades, it all looked ridiculous numerical masturbation, up until the point where public key cryptography was invented.<p>By contrast, military R&amp;D is HIDEOUSLY expensive by several orders of magnitude. The people whining about a $50 shrimp treadmill need to get their fucking head in order and look at the cost of the F-35.