BOSTON (RPT) - With the launch of the new federal agency, the National Institute of Magical Solutions (NIMS), scholars at universities around the country are being encouraged to alter their research programs to be consistent with the mission of the newly funded NIMS. This new federal body was funded after a governmental task force determined that it was a more effective use of taxpayer money because “existing federal agencies like NIH haven’t delivered on the promises we forced them to make decades ago to eradicate disease and give us all super-powers like invisibility and flying,” said a White House representative.
In a press conference yesterday, the newly-appointed Director of the NIMS explained, “We’ve been funding science all this time, but does science promise us quick and easy solutions to the challenges we’re facing? No, it doesn’t. Take, for example, COVID: the requirements that science says we need to meet to open safely - like extensive testing and contract tracing - are impractical. We will solve these problems much more conveniently using magic, and solve them before the next election without requiring any sacrifice. Magic promises so much more than science when it comes to reaching unrealistic goals, and so it will be the cornerstone of this nation’s strategy as we move forward.”
The NIMS will also utilize a sleight-of-hand financial model which will make its operations budget stretch much further than any other federally funded research agency. “We have been approved to utilize Creative Accounting in both our reporting of research expenditures and in the analysis and synthesis of data that comes out of funded research projects,” the NIMS Director noted at the end of the press conference. He then proceeded to force a reporter to “pick a card, any card.”
Researchers at universities and medical centers are being encouraged to change their research programs so that they are eligible for funding from this new agency. “My department chair told me that I should rethink my research program so that it is more innovative and responsive to funding opportunities, which seems reasonable and all, but then she made a gesture like she was waving a wand and said ‘Abracadabra! Wink, wink!’ which I thought was kind of weird,” a Research Professor at a prominent US University told RPT.
NIMS is also encouraging universities and other research centers to rehire faculty that may have been let go for fabricating data and other similar infractions, “we don’t really see these kinds of issues as problematic at NIMS,” said the NIMS Director, “magical solutions can take many forms and we don’t want to rule out creative approaches. We like to see innovative data management and opaque algorithms that can justify whatever conclusion you a priori determined to be the most expedient.” The portal for grant submission through the NIMS website is scheduled to open as soon as the NIMS Director hires a sorcerer with good enough html programming skills to ensure that submissions will be delivered directly to the underworld, where they can be reviewed by dead magicians and George Orwell.
