In 1979, the National Science Foundation awarded $39,600 — almost $155,000 in 2022 dollars — to study the effects of Himalayan mountaineering and the rise of Buddhism in Nepal.
Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave his Golden Fleece award to the National Science Foundation for this absurd project, stating that the purpose of this project was to study, “What, if any, connection there is between Sherpa involvement as mountaineering guides … and the contemporaneous rise of more orthodox Tibetan Buddhist religious practices in Nepal.”
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