Maggie's Farm

"...and how much did that brilliant study cost?"

I dunno, the feds pay for multitudes of possibly randomly useless studies like that. I worked with a guy who told me that his brother made his living on that. There are places on the U.S. govt web sites where you can place requests for grants to do that kind of thing (perform studies for money). According to my co-worker, he'd file numerous grant requests with all kinds of agencies with scientific titles and whatnot, when he got a bite, he'd spend a couple of weeks in the library doing research, another week at the computer typing it up, and then he'd submit it. All he needed was a couple of these a year to maintain his lifestyle. Now we're not talking a lot of money here. I think it was said the most he ever got out of one was like $30k. Most were less than $10k. Throw away money for most agencies, and in amounts that didn't require 10 levels of approval.

I'd file that study under the same place as "Why kids fall off bicycles" and "The physics of kissing".