These are researchers associated with multiple institutes each, so you've inflated the apparent number by quoting them multiple times. Only 10 people are listed

These are researchers associated with multiple institutes each, so you've inflated the apparent number by quoting them multiple times. Only 10 people are listed as authors (fairly small for a genetics paper) and of those, two are PIs, three (including the two main authors) are from the same research lab, and the rest are associated with the PIs. If you want to know the rationale for why this is "useful research" for the public to fund, look at the funding applications. They're public and the paper even lists them by grant number to make it easy. Here's one: https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-GM100233-05 https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-GM100233-05 It's fundamental research on the human genome though, pretty obviously applicable to medicine and human health.