When groups of people come together and pool their resources, great things can be accomplished (flinging humans onto the Moon comes to mind). In the US, the National Science Foundation is a factory of great things. It guides billions of tax dollars into university research projects each year (in 2015, $7.344 billion to be exact). And since science costs money, one unhappy necessity of the academic lifestyle is securing funding to keep the lights on and the lab running. (Give a kid a grant-writing kit to go with their chemistry set for Christmas. See if they play with it.) NSF grants are the lifeblood of many fields of science.

Getting a grant isn’t easy. In 2012 , for example, NSF reviewed more than 48,000 grant proposals—each representing work that researchers were chomping at the bit to do. Less than 12,000 won approval. A number of researchers volunteer their time each year to go review grant proposals in their field, recommending the proposals they feel to be the best use of the money budgeted for their discipline. As is generally the case with peer review of papers for scientific journals, the reviewers remain anonymous. (“Oh, hi Jane! Say, I see you shot down the proposal I’ve been working toward for a decade…”)

Recently, the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, led by Texas Representative Lamar Smith, has tussled with NSF over research that Rep. Smith felt was a waste of funding. That included a broad effort to alter the criteria NSF used in judging grants to ensure they are “in the national interest,” but it also involved attempts to probe the approval of individual grants. Rep. Smith requested access to all documents pertaining to certain grants, including the peer reviews NSF closely guards as confidential. NSF was not pleased with these requests. Neither was the Association of American Universities.

Most of the grants that were picked out seemed to be judged primarily on whether their titles sounded silly to people unfamiliar with the field. That follows a long tradition, including Sarah Palin’s infamous comments about “projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good—things like fruit fly research in Paris, France." Palin, apparently, didn’t know that fruit flies are model organisms for genetic studies of the kinds of disabilities she was giving her speech about—or that the specific study she mocked was studying the olive fruit fly that has been a costly pest to California’s olive-growing industry.

The recently retired Senator Tom Coburn produced an annual list of what he believed to be wasteful government spending called the “Wastebook.” The project also picked out research grants in this manner. Last year’s edition included an NSF grant it characterized as “Fossil Facebook.” The project is actually called the “FOSSIL Project," and it was funded under the “Advancing Informal STEM Learning” program at NSF and aims to connect amateur fossil clubs around the country with each other, as well as museums and researchers. The effort is partly paleontology outreach, encouraging more people to get involved with fossil groups. The project will also help amateur fossil hunters learn from and connect with professionals, helping participants with organizing meetings, offering access to workshops and conferences, and sending speakers to present research to clubs. One product of that collaboration would be work to get more specimens digitized, bringing them out of dark drawers and putting them on the Web.

According to the “Wastebook,” this was just a nearly-$2-million government grant to create the equivalent of a Facebook group, even though several Facebook groups for fossil enthusiasts already exist. It also said, “The data collection efforts may also duplicate those already underway with NSF funding, such as the Paleobiology Database for collecting fossil data.”

One week later, Rep. Lamar Smith sent a letter to NSF with a round of requests for “paper copies of the following public records: every e-mail, letter, memorandum, record, note, text message, all peer reviews considered for selection and recommendations made by the research panel to the National Science Foundation (NSF) or document of any kind that pertains to the NSF’s consideration and approval of the grants listed below, including any approved amendments to the grants." Included in the list was the 2010 grant for the Paleobiology Database.

So what is this Paleobiology Database? And would the FOSSIL Project duplicate it? The Paleobiology Database isn’t new—it was born in 1998. It was created to bring together data on fossils in rocks around the world and all through geologic time (about a million data points' worth now); it's meant to enable big picture research with that data. The website for the database lists more than 200 published studies that it made possible, and it has been cited by hundreds more. It’s a huge resource for the paleontological research community. It does not, however, involve digitizing individual fossils, as the FOSSIL Project is interested in.

The 2010 grant modernized the database and made it more accessible. The effort was led by University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist Shanan Peters, and the database migrated to a new digital home in Wisconsin for upgrades. Specifically, Peters told Ars their focus was to “execute some back-end changes to the hardware and software infrastructure that supports the [Paleobiology Database], including some data structure changes and development of algorithms that pre-compute a bunch of tables to enable fast live queries.” They built an API for the database and a couple of example apps, like the slick map-based portal seen above.

As Peters sees it, “this database resource has a huge impact on science, fulfills data access and archiving requirements posed by NSF and the federal government, and is a community resource with community governance. Not to mention the fact that its purpose is to develop infrastructure to make data more readily accessible, which is being used by energy industry, tech industry, and academia. It’s a great example of the positive impact of NSF funding and a model case of good use of funds. (In my opinion!)”

Congressional scrutiny of a grant sets the researchers and institutions involved scrambling to defend themselves. In this case, the university worked with Peters to produce a statement for Wisconsin’s congressional representatives that highlighted the project’s value to the field—and to the fossil fuel industry, which uses fossils in their search for resources deep underground.

The Paleontological Society got in on the act, as well, issuing a statement that read, in part, “The paleontological community strongly supports the Paleobiology Database. We are concerned about the open-ended nature of this investigation and its potentially chilling effect on the funding of the Paleobiology Database and the funding of paleontology in general. We are also concerned that the House Committee is undermining the peer-review system and the evaluation of the merits of scientific research by those most qualified to do so, the scientists.”

Peters expressed similar frustrations to Ars. “A huge amount of expensive time was spent dealing with this absurd and unjustified request,” he said. “The fact that they are meddling with peer review and the integrity of what has become a model system is the worst part.”

Ars reached out to Rep. Lamar Smith’s office for an explanation of why the Paleobiology Database grant was selected for scrutiny. A House Science Committee aide responded, “The committee’s goal through its oversight of the NSF grant award process is to gain a better, organic understanding of how the merit review process works by reading the application, reading the external reviewers’ comments, reading the minutes of panel discussions, and reading the comments and recommendations of the NSF program staff. Doing so will help our staff to understand potential differences that may exist in the merit review process among and within the various directorates [of NSF].”

The aide continued, “Some grants for which the committee has requested information have previously attracted constituent, [Committee] Member, or press questions. Others have been selected because the subject matter seems interesting. Still others are selected randomly to assure the cross-section alluded to above.”

When asked for comment on these inquiries, an NSF spokesperson defended the agency’s operations. “The National Science Foundation stands by its rigorous merit review process. NSF receives about 50,000 proposals each year and funds about 11,000 of those proposals each year. Each proposal received goes through the agency’s merit review process, meaning each proposal is reviewed in a fair, competitive, and in-depth manner. All proposals submitted to NSF are reviewed according to two merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. Nearly every proposal is evaluated by a minimum of three independent reviewers consisting of scientists, engineers, and educators who do not work at NSF or for the institution that employs the proposing researchers. NSF selects reviewers from the national pool of experts in each field.”

Although decisions about funding agencies like the National Science Foundation clearly lie within the realm of the politician, and all agencies are accountable for the wise use of tax dollars, the potential benefit of these probes is questionable. Members of Congress and their staffs also spend tax dollars when they spend their time investigating research grants. Those researchers then have to take the time to prove to politicians why their research is valuable—even though they already convinced their scientific colleagues.

What seems clear in this instance is that the Paleobiology Database grant made it through NSF’s approval process for good reason. Then again, Rep. Paul Broun, who chaired the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight until he left office a couple of weeks ago, once called evolution “lies straight from the pit of Hell.” So there’s that.