Golden Goose

Inside Higher Ed pointed me today to the “Golden Goose” awards established by some folks in Congress and in major educational groups as an antidote to other listings that are made to put research in a bad light.  Old timers will remember the Golden Fleece awards of Senator William Proxmire - back in the day -  which made fun of research that seemed silly.  From time to time, such seemingly-silly research continues to be highlighted by Proxmire’s successors.   

Of course, there is silly research and there are silly academics.  But not everything that seems silly, or abstract, or just not easy to understand turns out to be so.  

As it turns out, one of the folks on the Golden Goose list for this year is UCLA’s Nobelist Lloyd Shapely.  See, for example,

http://magazine.ucla.edu/exclusives/lloyd-shapely-uclas-newest-nobel-laureate/.   

A media release on the awards for this year is at http://www.goldengooseaward.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Golden-Goose-Awards-Ceremony-Honors-Seven-Researchers-9-19-13.pdf. 

Another honoree is Adjunct Prof. Hudson Freeze of UC-SD.  See

http://biomedsci.ucsd.edu/faculty/faculty_descrip.aspx?id=202.   

And the Inside Higher Ed story is at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/09/20/scientists-honored-studies-might-once-have-seemed-negligible.