May 2019 Squeal Award: the Pentagon

The following are a few examples of the types of Pentagon projects that could use more taxpayer scrutiny:

(1) Puppy Personalities Dogs wag their tails, lick, and bark to express their excitement when greeting humans or other dogs. Wolves, the wild canine relatives of dogs, are not as affectionate.

So why are dogs so doggone friendly?1 To find an answer, researchers fetched financial support from a $209,000 Office of

Naval Research grant as well as additional funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.2

The “sociability” of 18 domesticated dogs of various breeds—including boxers, golden

retrievers, Jack Russell terriers, miniature poodles, pugs, and miniature schnauzers—and 10 captive gray wolves was rated by measuring the amount of percentage of time each animal spent seeking attention from a human versus trying to open a box containing a piece of sausage.3

The researchers report, “the key difference we observed was that adult dogs were more likely to engage in prolonged or exaggerated contact with humans than adult wolves.”4

The social scores were then paired with the results of DNA testing, which identified differences in three genes that could be the reason dogs are so much friendlier.5

“Despite the difficulty in finding human-socialized wolves to use as subjects, the authors said they would like to study larger samples in the future.”6

Americans would probably prefer that

Washington stop throwing their tax dollars to the wolves.

Doggy DNA may be the reason dogs are so doggone friendly, according to a study that fetched support from

three government agencies including the DoD.

(2) Trek-nology Can objects, including people, be transported from one location to another in a blink of an eye?

The Air Force paid $25,000 to study the physics of teleportation,7 a theoretical concept involving “the instantaneous and or disembodied conveyance of objects through space,” other dimensions, and “parallel universes.”8

If this sounds like science fiction, that is because it is: Think Captain Kirk giving the command, “beam me up!” to Scotty when he needs to be transported back onboard the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek.

The popular sci-fi series is even referenced in the report detailing the study’s findings:

“Space colonists will need quick transport to get from Earth to their new home planet. Instead of using conventional transportation to expedite travel the space explorer, military personnel or space colonist and/or their equipment go into the ‘Teleporter’ (a.k.a. ‘Transporter’ in Star Trek lingo) and are ‘beamed down’ or ‘beamed over’ to their destinations at light speed.”9

The report notes, “modern hard-core SciFi literature, with the exception of the ongoing Star Trek franchise, has abandoned using the teleportation concept because writers believe that it has more to do with the realms of parapsychology/paranormal (a.k.a. psychic) and imaginative fantasy than with any realm of science.”10

Regardless, the study claims, “data exists to suggest” that psychic teleportation—the instantaneous movement from place to place using mind powers— “is quite real and that it is controllable.”11

The report recommends spending $7.5 million to develop the teleportation Trek-nology that would allow space explorers to boldly go where no man has gone before.12

The Air Force paid $25,000 for a “Teleportation Physics Study,” that claims “data exists to suggest” psychic teleportation—the

instantaneous movement from place to place using mind powers—is “quite real and that it is controllable.”1

(3) The Doughnut Distraction

Ever been distracted by a carrot? How about a doughnut?

Doughnuts, pizza, and ice cream are about twice as distracting as carrots, apples and salads, according to a study funded from a $3.9 million Department of Defense grant with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation.13 14 Healthy foods are no more distracting than inedible items like lava lamps and footballs.15

The study participants were given “a complicated computer task” and as they worked,

pictures of various types of foods and other items “flashed in the periphery of the screen.”16

While all the pictures were distracting, the images of junk food were particularly distracting. “We showed them carrots and apples, and it slowed them down. We showed them bicycles and thumb tacks, and it slowed them down. But when we showed them chocolate cake and hot dogs, these things slowed them down about twice as much,” explains one of the researchers.17

Dollars to doughnuts, most Americans could have predicted these findings and could find better ways to spend defense dollars.

The researchers did find a possible cure for the doughnut distraction, however. After

eating two “fun sized” candy bars, “people found junk food no more interesting than kale.”18

Cupcakes and doughnuts are much more distracting than healthy food or objects that are not meant to be eaten, according to a study funded by the

Department of Defense and National Science Foundation.

(4) Spidey Sense

Spider-Man is alerted to impending danger by a tingling sensation he refers to as his “Spidey Sense.” This superhuman premonition that enables the web slinger to outmaneuver villains and dodge bullets was acquired when Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider.

Calling it “More than a Feeling,” the Office of Naval

Research (ONR) is spending $3.85 million investigating “Spidey Sense.”19 The initiative is exploring whether such an extrasensory power exists and if it can be tapped in real life.20

The Spidey Sense project is “an initial effort,” and the

four-year project could be “expanded into a longer program.”21 An ONR program officer explains, “First, we have to understand what gives rise to this so-called ‘sixth sense.’ Can we model it? Is there a way to improve it through training?”22

“Official Defense Department literature” refers to the intuitive ability of premonition “when people ‘know’ without knowing how they know”23 as “sense-making,” rather than extrasensory perception (ESP), to avoid being associated with the supernatural.24

It may be just a premonition, but spending taxpayer money to acquire comic book inspired super powers doesn’t make sense.

Spider-Man is alerted to imminent danger by a tingling sensation he refers to as his “Spidey Sense” (top right). The Navy is spending

$3.85 million investigating if such a sixth sense can be tapped outside the pages of comic books (above).1

(5) Cheating Robots

“You totally cheated! You’re not allowed to cheat. You’re the robot.”25 That outburst was from a Yale student playing the children’s game “Rock-Paper-

Scissors” against a robot programmed to cheat.26 In all, 60 human participants, mostly Yale

undergraduate and graduate students, were individually pitted against a humanoid robot named Nico in 20 rounds of the game.27 The tournament was funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation.28

Nico was designed to play the game by

mimicking human hand motions representing a rock, paper, or scissors. “To play, the robot raises and lowers its arm four times, and makes a gesture immediately after lowering its arm for the fourth time: ‘Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!’ After each round, the robot announces the result: ‘Yes, I win,’

‘Aw, you win’ or ‘We have tied this round.’”29 Unknown to the human participants, the robot was being controlled from a remote

location by a programmer who made the robot cheat by either announcing the incorrect result (always in the robot’s favor) or by changing its throw to the winning gesture.30

The human players

were “more likely to consider the verbal cheat as a malfunction and the action cheat as a cheating behavior.”31 Humans also attempted to have more social engagement with the robot by trying to speak with it when it cheated, but also developed “unfavorable character attributions to the cheating robot.”32

The take away from the study: Cheating makes machines seem more human.33

Hardworking Americans, however, may find that spending taxpayer money to create

cheating robots does not compute.

Yale students played Rock-Paper-Scissors with a robot, as part of a project supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

and National Science Foundation.

A robot was taught how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, then programmed to cheat.

End Notes

1 Carrie Arnold, “Why Are Dogs So Friendly? Science Finally Has an Answer,” National Geographic, July 19,

2017; https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/dogs-breeds-pets-wolves-evolution/. 2 The study was partially funded by Office of Naval Research grant N000141512347.

Office of Naval Research grant N000141512347 totaling $208,867 awarded to Arizona State University for

“enhanced canine odor generalization through concept training in automated olfactometers,” USAspending.gov

website, accessed April 12, 2019; https://www.usaspending.gov/#/award/49104283.

Bridgett M. vonHoldt, Emily Shuldiner, Ilana Janowitz Koch, Rebecca Y. Kartzinel, Andrew Hogan, Lauren

Brubaker, Shelby Wanser, Daniel Stahler, Clive D. L. Wynne, Elaine A. Ostrander, Janet S. Sinsheimer, and

Monique A. R. Udell, “Structural variants in genes associated with human Williams-Beuren syndrome underlie

stereotypical hypersociability in domestic dogs,” Science Advances, July 19, 2017;

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398. 3 Bridgett M. vonHoldt, Emily Shuldiner, Ilana Janowitz Koch, Rebecca Y. Kartzinel, Andrew Hogan, Lauren

Brubaker, Shelby Wanser, Daniel Stahler, Clive D. L. Wynne, Elaine A. Ostrander, Janet S. Sinsheimer, and

Monique A. R. Udell, “Structural variants in genes associated with human Williams-Beuren syndrome underlie

stereotypical hypersociability in domestic dogs,” Science Advances, July 19, 2017;

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398. 4 Bridgett M. vonHoldt, Emily Shuldiner, Ilana Janowitz Koch, Rebecca Y. Kartzinel, Andrew Hogan, Lauren

Brubaker, Shelby Wanser, Daniel Stahler, Clive D. L. Wynne, Elaine A. Ostrander, Janet S. Sinsheimer, and

Monique A. R. Udell, “Structural variants in genes associated with human Williams-Beuren syndrome underlie

stereotypical hypersociability in domestic dogs,” Science Advances, July 19, 2017;

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398. 5 Bridgett M. vonHoldt, Emily Shuldiner, Ilana Janowitz Koch, Rebecca Y. Kartzinel, Andrew Hogan, Lauren

Brubaker, Shelby Wanser, Daniel Stahler, Clive D. L. Wynne, Elaine A. Ostrander, Janet S. Sinsheimer, and

Monique A. R. Udell, “Structural variants in genes associated with human Williams-Beuren syndrome underlie

stereotypical hypersociability in domestic dogs,” Science Advances, July 19, 2017;

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398. 6 Mira Abed, “Scientists find key ‘friendliness’ genes that distinguish dogs from wolves,” Los Angeles Times, July

21, 2017; https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-dog-friendliness-genes-20170719-story.html. 7 Dan Vergano, “Air Force report calls for $7.5M to study psychic teleportation,” USA Today, November 5, 2004;

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&urlID=12187265&partnerID=1665. 8 “Teleportation Physics Study,” prepared for the U.S. Air Force by Warp Drive Metrics, NTIS National Technical

Reports Library, accessed April 3, 2019;

https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA425545.xhtml. 9 “Teleportation Physics Study,” prepared for the U.S. Air Force by Warp Drive Metrics, NTIS National Technical

Reports Library, accessed April 3, 2019;

https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA425545.xhtml. 10 “Teleportation Physics Study,” prepared for the U.S. Air Force by Warp Drive Metrics, NTIS National Technical

Reports Library, accessed April 3, 2019;

https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA425545.xhtml. 11 “Teleportation Physics Study,” prepared for the U.S. Air Force by Warp Drive Metrics, NTIS National Technical

Reports Library, accessed April 3, 2019;

https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA425545.xhtml. 12 “Teleportation Physics Study,” prepared for the U.S. Air Force by Warp Drive Metrics, August 2004, available at

on the website of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy at

https://fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf. 13 Funding for this research was provided by Office of Naval Research Grant No. N000141010278 and National

Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship DGE-1232825.

Office of Naval Research Grant No. N000141010278 totaling $3,948,329 to the Johns Hopkins University for

figure-ground processing, saliency, and guided attention for analysis of large natural scenes,” USAspending.gov

website, accessed April 15, 2019; https://www.usaspending.gov/#/award/49098351.

“Graduate Research Fellowship Program,” Award Abstract #1232825, $12,963,429 grant to the Johns Hopkins

University for the period beginning March 1, 2012 and ending February 28, 2018 (estimated), National Science

Foundation on-line database, accessed April 15, 2019;

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1232825&HistoricalAwards=false.

Corbin A. Cunningham and Howard E. Egeth, “The capture of attention by entirely irrelevant pictures of calorie-

dense foods,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, October 26, 2017;

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13423-017-1375-8.pdf. 14 Jill Rosen, “Junk food is almost twice as distracting as healthy food, study finds,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins

University Office of Communications, October 26, 2017; https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/10/26/junk-food-twice-as-

distracting/. 15 Jill Rosen, “Junk food is almost twice as distracting as healthy food, study finds,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins

University Office of Communications, October 26, 2017; https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/10/26/junk-food-twice-as-

distracting/. 16 Jill Rosen, “Junk food is almost twice as distracting as healthy food, study finds,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins

University Office of Communications, October 26, 2017; https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/10/26/junk-food-twice-as-

distracting/. 17 Jill Rosen, “Junk food is almost twice as distracting as healthy food, study finds,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins

University Office of Communications, October 26, 2017; https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/10/26/junk-food-twice-as-

distracting/. 18 Jill Rosen, “Junk food is almost twice as distracting as healthy food, study finds,” The Hub, Johns Hopkins

University Office of Communications, October 26, 2017; https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/10/26/junk-food-twice-as-

distracting/. 19 “More than a Feeling: ONR Investigates ‘Spidey Sense’ for Sailors and Marines,” Department of Defense, the

Office of Naval Research press release, March 27, 2014; https://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Media-Center/Press-

Releases/2014/ONR-studies-intuitive-decision-making. 20 Annie Jacobsen, “The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense,” Time, April 3, 2017;

http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/. 21 Channing Joseph, “U.S. Navy Program to Study How Troops Use Intuition,” New York Times, March 27, 2012;

https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/navy-program-to-study-how-troops-use-intuition/?_r=0. 22 “More than a Feeling: ONR Investigates ‘Spidey Sense’ for Sailors and Marines,” Department of Defense, the

Office of Naval Research press release, March 27, 2014; https://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Media-Center/Press-

Releases/2014/ONR-studies-intuitive-decision-making. 23 Kathleen Bartlett, Margaret Nolan, and Andrea Marraffino, “Intuitive Sensemaking: From Theory to Simulation

Based Training,” International Conference on Augmented Cognition, 2013;

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-39454-6_1. 24 Annie Jacobsen, “The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense,” Time, April 3, 2017;

http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/. 25 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 26 A video is available at https://scazlab.yale.edu/our-robots.

“Our Robots,” Yale University Social Robotics Lab website, accessed May 9, 2019.

Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 27 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 28 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf.

Support for this study was provided by the DARPA Computer Science Futures II program and National Science

Foundation awards #0534610 (Quantitative Measures of Social Response in Autism), #0835767 (Understanding

Regulation of Visual Attention in Autism through Computational and Robotic Modeling) and CAREER award

#0238334 (Social Robots and Human Social Development). 29 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 30 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf.

31 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 32 Elaine Short, Justin Hart, Michelle Vu, and Brian Scassellati, “No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot,”

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, March 2010;

https://scazlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Short10.pdf. 33 “Our Robots,” Yale University Social Robotics Lab website, accessed May 9, 2019; https://scazlab.yale.edu/our-

robots.