IF you had half a million dollars to spend on scientific research, would you rather try to find a cure for cancer or see whether women get sexually aroused while watching pornography?

No brainer, right?

Unfortunately not.

American taxpayers have foot the bill, sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, to fund research into obvious, if not downright bizarre, topics.

Like whether men or women are more likely to sleep with a stranger?

Or whether athletes' muscles feel more relaxed after getting a massage, reported ABC News.

Each of those questions has been studied by academics and politicians have put them under the microscope recently.

'Oftentimes academic researchers will get government grants to do things that you've got to wonder: Why are they doing that?' said MrMerrill Goozner, director of the integrity in science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

'There's plenty of research out there that doesn't need to be done, and why somebody funds it is one of the great mysteries of life.'

The National Institutes of Health has an annual budget of US$29.5 billion ($41.6b), most of it going out in grants to researchers around the country.

The average amount awarded in research grants last year was US$403,528.

A few years ago, NIH gave a US$147,000 grant to a Northwestern University psychology professor who was paying women to view pornography while a device measured their sexual responses.

That study didn't go over too well in the halls of Congress.

Arizona Representative Jeff Flake was among 20 Republicans to sign a letter to NIH's director asking for an explanation for why taxpayer money was going for such a study.

They called it 'a bizarre spending decision.'

A spokesman for NIH declined to comment about studies that some consider a waste of tax dollars.

Senator Charles Grassley recently said NIH failed to oversee conflicts of interest in its grants, as many of those grant recipients also get money from drug companies.

But MrMarc Abrahams, editor of Improbable Research which tracks research projects, said that with roughly 100,000 medical journals published in the US, part of the reason there are so many studies is simply because of the way academia works.

'In order to get hired, in order to keep your job and to get promoted, you have to publish a lot of studies,' he said.

'There are an awful lot of studies that were done apparently because somebody needed to get some more things on their resume.'

Worthy topics or foregone conclusions?

1. Massage is good

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently funded a US study which concluded that a Swedish massage can make you feel better after working out. The researchers used sedated rabbits, not humans, for this study. The grant is part of a larger research program at Ohio State University.

2. Men love sex

In a 1989 study by two state college professors, men and women randomly approached strangers of the opposite sex on a college campus and say: ' I find you to be very attractive', and then invite the strangers to have sex.' Most of the men are willing but none of the women agreed.

3. Stupid when drunk

A researcher at the University of Bristol in England used a US$60,000 grant to conclude that with just a little bit of alcohol consumed in a short period of time, people find others roughly 10percent more attractive than when they are sober.

This article was first published in The New Paper on August 23, 2008.