It has some merit sometimes, but I prefer not to rely on this justification. These are incidental benefits at the margins at best. My preferred argument is, if

It has some merit sometimes, but I prefer not to rely on this justification. These are incidental benefits at the margins at best. My preferred argument is, if we can spend billions on trivialities like carbonated sugar water and computer games, as a civilisation we can afford basic science research. It’s not actually all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and cutting science would not necessarily have any impact on funding for the alternative things (world peace, feeding the poor, etc) people who complain about such funding want. If they want to complain about waste they are picking a particularly poor target. A bit of a tangent, as the head comment wasn’t actually making this complaint.