Back in 2011, the late Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn released this 73-page report to publicize what he considered wasteful spending by the National Science Foundation.

The project that got the most media attention by far was part of a 10-year study, funded by $1.3 million in federal grants over that time,

and it came complete with irresistible video of the study subject,

a little shrimp with its 10 legs frantically whizzing along on an underwater conveyor belt.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

It is a safe bet that no scientist is eager to generate the next shrimp on a treadmill joke headline.

Although, as turns out, this might...

It's a safe bet that no scientist is eager to generate the next shrimp on a treadmill joke headline,

although, as it turns out, the marine biologist who built it had a good reason.

But my guest, who is an animal physiologist herself, wants us all to understand that many scientific inquiries

with no immediate practical application,

the kind of research driven purely by human curiosity, they can yield knowledge whose value

becomes clear way down the road. Carly Ann York is Associate Professor of Biology at Lenore

Rhine University. Her book is called The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog and other serious discoveries of silly science.

Carly, welcome to think.

Thank you so much for having me.

This book really isn't about you per se, but you do share that you work in the world of basic research.

What does that mean exactly, basic research?

Yeah, so basic research is the opposite of

applied research in that you are going in for a purely curiosity-driven question without

any immediate goal of an application. So applied research is usually tied to some kind of what

...