The Golden Goose Awards are intended to recognize investigators who have pursued what might have appeared at the time to be research topics of questionable value but have yielded valuable results. The name for the awards – Golden Goose – is a direct response to the Golden Fleece Awards given by the late Senator William Proxmire, which he awarded to researchers with funding to pursue studies he considered to be a waste of taxpayer money.
The real purpose of these awards is to recognize the value of serendipity in research – that pursuing questions that may seem odd can yield significant results. The investigators responsible for the discovery of green fluorescent protein used heavily in molecular biology research, inventing the Laser, and development of a new kind of bone graft are the first Golden Goose Award recipients.
