Samueli Institute: Some Background from Wired Magazine

This article is older, but I wanted to include it in the blog archive because the Samueli Institute is pretty unique.

But it isn’t all inner peace and holistic healing. The Institute was founded by a Fortune 500 billionaire with a history of financial scandal. They pay their director nearly half a million dollars each year. Almost all their military studies are funded by congressional earmarks that reek of preferential treatment. And little of their research fits the medical community’s gold standard.
In their defense, Institute leaders tell me that it makes sense for certain congressmen to offer funding for Institute research — because those same reps also advocate for alternative medicine. They tell me that their director is a talent unlike any other and their billionaire founder has a clean track record, and exhort that all their research is rock-solid.

The Samueli Institute does some cutting edge research on alternative medicine.  The head of it, Wayne Jonas, spoke at the Society for Acupuncture Research I attended in Michigan in April.  He makes over $400,ooo.  That I did not know.