Research works by prioritizing it to places where people expect a return. My friend has a PhD in cancer research because this way she takes part in saving human

Research works by prioritizing it to places where people expect a return. My friend has a PhD in cancer research because this way she takes part in saving human lives with the highest probability/impact. She could of course go to study anatomy more instead, but as it has an opportunity cost of more people dying of cancer. Not having faith in medicine, which had many breakthroughs in the past few years just because it doesn't prioritize low impact research is what I would call dismissive.