He practically did this for a living. At the time, many scientists and space geeks had his picture on dart boards.

Science is as vulnerable to pork deals as any other human endeavor. As with any pork funding in any category, if you ask the people involved in spending the money, they will tell you it's utterly essential, which apparently is why they can't get anyone to pay for it otherwise.

Thompson's fruit fly project won an "Oinker" award from the Citizens Against Government Waste. However, you don't have to scroll very far down the page to see that the fruit fly pork is almost lost in the noise compared to some other major hogloads.

Where it gets difficult is that some of the research actually is useful. Who decides? A panel of scientists? Or the Senator or Congressman feeding cash to his district? The problem with all government spending is that there's not a lot of real oversight, and not likely to be any time soon.

Fair disclosure: I speak as someone who once worked for Gravity Probe B, arguably an enormous pork project in itself.