4. Determine Whether Playing with Barbie Dolls Improves Face Recognition

In 2016, researchers at the National Science Foundation and National Eye Institute conducted a $300,000 study to determine if playing with Barbies — which was more common among the female participants in the study — improves women’s facial recognition abilities.

Since there are a lot of Barbie dolls with different faces, scientists came up with a hypothesis according to which women might be better at memorizing how faces look. In other words, researchers thought that women may have a gender-based advantage that men don’t have, so they decided to find out whether it was true or not.

It turns out that playing with Barbie dolls doesn’t help with facial recognition. So, that’s basically tax money that came out of your income for no reason.