Proxmire had a well-known reputation attacking hard-working scientists with perfectly valid scientific research simply to get a reaction to a press release. His intent was to target government waste, but he found he could get much more publicity by making fun of scientists just because the public didn't understand their work.

As an example, I remember Marvin Minsky walking into 6.034 one morning in 1978 completely apoplectic over an article in that morning's "Ergo" (A MIT/Harvard libertarian free student newspaper distributed on campus) criticizing some research on homosexual behavior in ducks. I can't find any current reference to Proxmire, but I recall he was involved and it would have been up his alley. Anyway, as I remember, Minsky spent most of the morning explaining the research and it's importance with a real passion. It's one of those things you don't forget.

EDIT: I found a reference that says how Proxmire had his staff compile constituent responses to his endless press releases to find subjects sparked the most interest. He was pretty much seen as an idiot in academia but he could easily ruin careers.

It's probably just that they wrote this for fun because I can't imagine anyone would fund it. Economists use a surprising amount of dry humor like that, I've noticed.

An old one:

  Remember the unfortunate econometrician, who, in one of the major functions of his system, had to use a proxy for risk and a dummy* for sex.

*(a discrete dependent variable)