The National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research is having a meeting on Friday this coming week. But the meeting is closed to the public.

The grant applications and the discussions could disclose confidential trade secrets or commercial property such as patentable material, and personal information concerning individuals associated with the grant applications, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

Grant applicants are using government funds to work on advancing their business interests, so we don’t get to know about it? And on top of that, we don’t get to know who they are?

This looks like a bunch of bunk. The meeting notice is even being published less than the 15 days prior to the meeting as required “due to the timing limitations imposed by the review and funding cycle.” Uh-huh.

But nobody pays much attention to the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research, and so they get to do stuff like this. In the dark corners of the government stuff like this goes on all the time. It’s your money. You’re paying for it.