I agree that the denigration by US Republican senators Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) and John McCain (Arizona) of some of the research projects funded by last year's economic-stimulus package is “ill-informed and wide of the mark” (Nature 466, 797; 2010).

Their report is not their first on the subject; last December they targeted some other research funded through the rigorous peer-review process of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Number 35 in that report is a grant I received to continue my 37-year study of how the changing environment is affecting the phenology and abundance of flowering of more than 100 species of montane wild flowers.

It took two attempts for my research proposal to be accepted, at a time when only about 10% of proposals were successful. I can't speak for all the agencies that funded studies using stimulus money, but I am confident from my experience that NSF funds are being well spent.

I offered to talk with both senators about my work and why it is an appropriate, cost-efficient way to stimulate research activity and the economy; they did not respond. Their efforts to make light of serious research follow in the footsteps of the Golden Fleece Awards, established in 1975 by former senator William Proxmire, which many recipients of federal funding paradoxically came to consider as a highlight of their research careers.