But Who Will Study Those Who Do the Studying?

What happens when public officials start to worry that their wing of the government is performing too many studies? They commission a study to study the cost effectiveness of its studies. And then a separate arm of the government performs its own study of that study. And then you realize that you dropped way too much acid before strolling into the funhouse hall of mirrors this year, or that this just how the federal government works all the time. Via Yahoo News:

The Pentagon was inundated with so many studies in 2010 that it commissioned a study to determined how much it cost to produce all those studies.

Now the Government's Accounting Office has reviewed the Pentagon's study and concluded in a report this week that it's a flop.

The study of a study of studies began in 2010 when Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained that his department was "awash in taskings for reports and studies." He wanted to know how much they cost.

Two years later, the Pentagon review is still continuing, which prompted Congress to ask the GAO to look over the Pentagon's shoulder. What they found lacked military precision.

The GAO found only nine studies that had been scrutinized by the Pentagon review, but the military was unable to "readily retrieve documentation" for six of  the reports.

You can read the complete GAO study here.