What you’re smelling is the pungent odor of taxpayers’ dollars fermenting in the hot sun of Inanegrantland. I propose we collectively fund a study of funded studies. A simple numerical scale of validity could be incorporated to gauge results. Hypothetically speaking, a score of 10 would indicate a given funded study merits time and financial resources, as well as deeming it valuable in some way for the greater pursuit of knowledge. Similarly, a score of 0 would succinctly label a given funded study as absolute worthless bullshit. Those academics/research scientists, etc. who proved themselves worthy with high scores, would live to study another day. Conversally, those with minimal scores would be given the choice of leaving academia immediately to work for minimum wage ad infinitum, or get shot in their heads and dumped in a mass scholastic grave, shadowed by a sizable headstone reading, “Here lies a bunch of arrogant eggheaded pricks who wasted our hard-earned money on nothing. Fuck ’em all.”

Now please point me in the direction of the crack team of scholars currently studying the seasonal color changes of the male Equatorial Guinea mandrill’s ass, and their posited relationship to the price fluctuation of shark fin soup on the Chinese black market as it pertains to the division of church and state in the original 13 colonies.