Via "Scott Aaronson":http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1340, Congressional pushback against NSF funding "has expanded":http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/nsf-peer-review-under-scrutiny-b.html
The Kaiser Foundation "reports the results":http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080916/pl_usnw/unique_experiment_finds_health_content_placed_in_grey___s_anatomy_episode_quadrupled_awareness_among_audience__over_eight_milli of an interesting experiment.