It reminds me of the "treadmills for shrimp" thing that people used to say that research money was being wasted on about 14 years ago. Every intellectually lazy politician acted like we were spending all our research money on making sure that shrimp were exercising.
The "treadmills" were used to measure the effects of bacteria on shrimp metabolism. Understanding how bacteria affects metabolism, at least to me, sounds like a perfectly valid thing to research. Most people, if they knew the context around that would probably agree, but people are extremely lazy with this stuff, and are really susceptible to stupid catchphrases, so people thought it was a huge waste of money.
ETA:
https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...
Fascinating—if unfortunate—to see the world's 2 most powerful men basically functioning as walking test cases for classic outcomes when a child is not given appropriate attention/affection and also zero boundaries for socially-appropriate behavior.