Ethical Responsibility of Public Funding

I came across a very good blog post, here. The author discusses the ethical responsibilities that should go along with research that is funded with taxpayer dollars. I don't think we, as scientists, spend much time thinking about what ethical responsibilities we have to our funders. This is a difficult area to draw a distinct line about what is right and wrong because so much of our enterprise is searching for something unknown, but this article bring up some important questions. When is it unethical to use money from one grant for another project? How much money should be spent to improve efficiency versus finding the cheapest option? How many hours should we be required to work?

The author also responds to comments below the article and brings up more interesting points. Maybe we should spend a little bit more time remembering our responsibility to the taxpayer.