money well spent

UK's Ministry of Defence admitted it had spent £18,000 on trying to discover if psychic powers existed and could be exploited, militarily.

In a trial, subjects were blindfolded and attempted to "see" the
contents of brown envelopes in an experiment to try and use something
the MoD described as "remote viewing".

The conclusion, essentially, was that it does not work, which
readers may feel they would have been happy to tell the MoD for a far
more competitive fee.