I agree on most of what you write but thats not really my point either. My point isn't that we shouldn't have the arts or humanities or social sciences, these

I agree on most of what you write but thats not really my point either. My point isn't that we shouldn't have the arts or humanities or social sciences, these are very important areas. The discussion was whether it needs funding or whether we could use the money for basic research instead. Again not because it's not important but because it can be done in other ways such as self studies. The biggest issue for the non-stem fields is that they have no external reality check and that opens up for the most absurd studies to be done and more importantly often affect society without any solid base because they can't be reproduced yet might affect policy. https://www.nature.com/news/social-sciences-suffer-from-severe-publication-bias-1.15787 https://www.nature.com/news/social-sciences-suffer-from-seve... This is not just a problem for social sciences this is also a problem in real sciences but there are checks and balances in place that allow you to test that not so for humanities and social sciences. And again I am not saying the fields under humanities, art and social sciences aren't important they are just not science.