Implying there is a limited resource of research effort that is being diverted from vaccines and into aliens, and that if all that research effort was put into

Implying there is a limited resource of research effort that is being diverted from vaccines and into aliens, and that if all that research effort was put into vaccines it would translate into better results in a shorter period of time. If this was true, maybe it should all be reverted to curing infant cancer, or solving global hunger and bad distribution of wealth. In any case, those assumptions don't necessarily hold: we can very well study aliens, at the same time we research vaccines and try to redistribute wealth.