In 1981, Department of Defense Paid $13K for Useless Bull Experiment

In 1981, the Department of Defense paid $13,000 – worth over $41,000 in 2022 dollars – for a six-year study that they later admitted was completely useless, all to save the pride of a senior official who made a mistake in his Congressional testimony.

Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, awarded the Department of Defense his Golden Fleece Award for this shameful waste of money.

The saga began in 1974, when the Navy began testing a new system called ELF — Extremely Low Frequency — to communicate with submarines. When some questions arose at a Congressional hearing about the system’s possible biological side effects to Naval sailors, then Deputy Sec. of Defense William Clements mistakenly said that the system had been tested on cattle, despite there being no such test.

Not wanting to stain the reputation of Clements, the Navy rushed to begin such tests to give credibility to those statements. They spent $13,000 to purchase and care for a Hereford Bull named Sylvester, who was promptly placed in a cramped 10x10 foot pen onboard a submarine.

Soon, Naval officials realized that this experiment wouldn’t lead to any valid results, since the sample size was one bull of “questionable quality.” Nonetheless, they kept the charade up for six years, leaving Sylvester in isolation on a submarine, knowing it was all for nothing. Finally, after six years, the order came to put Sylvester down, and an autopsy concluded that while he was a bit obese, he was an otherwise healthy specimen.

While this study may not have the eye-popping numbers of other examples, it is an apt case study in the lengths the government will go through to avoid embarrassment.

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