The supervisor can still be right! Scientific relevance and societal relevance are at odds all the time. Just look at cosmology or any other field with very ver

The supervisor can still be right! Scientific relevance and societal relevance are at odds all the time. Just look at cosmology or any other field with very very long term, slim, payoff and huge costs. As much as we curiosity oriented people dislike it, satifsying our curiosity about the origin of the universe has very low impact. The most impact probably comes from the theoretical understanding that results in new engineering capabilities to build new weapons, industrial machines or energy sources. |But then the question can be asked "why not fund that research direction directly ?"