Did a U.S. Senator really sabotage scientific progress with a satirical award?
In short: William Proxmire, a long-serving Wisconsin senator, became infamous for his Golden Fleece Award, which mocked government spending he deemed wasteful. While he claimed to be a champion of the taxpayer, critics argued his aggressive targeting of research projects—including SETI—recklessly obstructed scientific advancement for his own political gain.
Serving in the U.S. Senate from 1957 to 1989, William Proxmire established himself as a relentless critic of federal expenditure. In 1975, he launched the Golden Fleece Award, a monthly satirical honor designed to highlight projects he considered egregious wastes of public funds. The inaugural award targeted an $84,000 National Science Foundation study on human attraction. Other recipients included the Justice Department for researching why prisoners sought release, and the Federal Aviation Administration for measuring the buttocks of airline stewardesses.
The legacy of the award remains deeply contested. Proxmire’s detractors, including Stewart Brand, argued that the senator frequently attacked legitimate basic science with little regard for the truth or the long-term consequences for American research policy. The term "proxmired" emerged in some circles to describe the act of unfairly stalling scientific work for political theater. Proxmire eventually apologized for the cancellation of several projects, most notably his successful efforts to terminate NASA’s nascent SETI program through budget amendments in 1982.
Despite the controversy, Proxmire was a formidable political force, holding the Senate record for 10,252 consecutive roll call votes cast between 1966 and 1988. His aggressive style occasionally backfired; in 1976, researcher Ronald Hutchinson sued him for defamation after receiving a Golden Fleece. The resulting Supreme Court case, Hutchinson v. Proxmire, established that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause did not grant senators total immunity for defamatory statements made outside formal proceedings. While he was often criticized for his stance on science, Proxmire remained a fixture of Wisconsin politics, winning reelection by wide margins until his retirement.
It is a common misconception that Proxmire awarded the Golden Fleece to Edward F. Knipling for his research on the screwworm fly. In reality, no evidence of this exists in the senator's papers, and the research in question occurred decades before the Golden Fleece era. This myth persists despite the fact that Knipling’s work, which led to the eradication of a major cattle parasite, was a triumph of scientific application that ultimately reduced global food costs.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: William Proxmire
- Also: www.britannica.com — William Proxmire | United States senator | Britannica
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