Golden Goose Award

The Golden Goose Award is a United States award in recognition of

Background

Between 1975 and 1988, William Proxmire, a Democratic United States Senator for Wisconsin awarded the tongue-in-cheek Golden Fleece Awards to public officials for spending public money in ways he considered irresponsible or wasteful. These awards were often given to scientists working on seemingly obscure federally funded scientific studies causing ridicule and scrutiny of the usefulness of such research.

The Golden Goose Awards were established over two decades later in order to highlight the value of federally-funded basic research. With the Golden Goose Award, Cooper wanted to reverse the image created by Proxmire's award by highlighting examples of seemingly obscure studies that have led to major breakthroughs and resulted in significant societal impact.

support in Congress, sponsored by multiple organizations and legislators.

Awardees

Year	Award Title	Project	Awardees
2012	Coralline Ceramics	Bone Grafts from Coral	Jon Weber, Eugene White, Rodney White, Della Roy
	Green Fluorescent Protein	Medical Advances from Jellyfish	Roger Tsien
	The Maser	The Maser	Charles Townes
2013	Diabetes Medication	Diabetes Medication Developed from Gila Monster Venom	John Eng
	Thermus aquaticus	Thermus aquaticus	Thomas D. Brock, Hudson Freeze
	Market Design	Market Design	Alvin E. Roth, David Gale, Lloyd Shapley
2014	Black Holes and Supercomputing	Black Holes and Supercomputing	Larry Smarr
	Auction Design	Auction Design	Preston McAfee, Paul Milgrom, Robert Wilson
	Rat and Infant Massage	Rat Massage Research Helps Premature Babies Thrive	Tiffany Field, Gary Evoniuk, Cynthia Kuhn, Saul Schanberg
2015	Trick or Treat: The Marshmallow Test	The Marshmallow Test	Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, Philip Peake
	Out of Sight: Neuroplasticity and Vision	Ocular Dominance Columns	Torsten Wiesel, David Hubel
	Of Maps and Men	Hypsographic Demography	Joel E. Cohen, Christopher Small
2016	A Tale of Two Studies: The Adolescent Health Story	The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health	Peter Bearman, Barbara Entwisle, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Ronald Rindfuss, Richard Udry
	The Sex Life of the Screw Worm Fly	The Sex Life of the Screw Worm Fly	Raymond C. Bushland
	The Honey Bee Algorithm	The Honey Bee Algorithm	John J. Bartholdi III, Sunil Nakrani, Thomas Dyer Seeley, Craig A. Tovey, John Hagood Vande Vate
2017	The Sea Soy Solution[4]	The Sea Soy Solution	Kaichang Li
	The Silence of the Frogs[5]	The Silence of the Frogs	Joyce Longcore, Elaine Lamirande, Don Nichols, Allan Pessier
	Fuzzy Logic, Clear Impact[6]	Fuzzy Logic, Clear Impact	Lotfi A. Zadeh
2018	The Goose Gland: Discoveries in Immunology[7]	The Goose Gland: Discoveries in Immunology	Bruce Glick
	Chickens, Cells and Cytokines[8]	Chickens, Cells and Cytokines	Stanley Cohen
	Implicit Bias, Explicit Science[9]	Implicit Bias, Explicit Science	Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald, Brian Nosek
2019	The Blood of the Horseshoe Crab[10]	The Blood of the Horseshoe Crab	Jack Levin, Frederik Bang
	Advancing Autoimmunity[11]	Advancing Autoimmunity	Ernest Witebsky
	The Frog Skin that saved 50 Million Lives[12]	The Frog Skin that saved 50 Million Lives	David B. Sachar
2020	A Llama Named Winter[13]	A Llama Named Winter	Jason McLellan, Daniel Wrapp
	The Human Immunome: Small Moves Become a Movement[14]	The Human Immunome: Small Moves Become a Movement	James E. Crowe
	A Spike in Momentum[15]	A Spike in Momentum	Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, Emmie de Wit, and Vincent Munster

Founding organizations

Some of the twelve founding organizations for this award are the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (A۰P۰L۰U), the Breakthrough Institute, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), and The Science Coalition (TSC) ^[3]

References

External links

• Official website
• Golden Goose Awards honor "silly" science. CBS News. September 14, 2012.
• First Golden Goose Awards Honor Ideas That Hatched Unexpectedly. Science Insider. Science. September 10, 2012.