> I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact that we were contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all. Research has to happen som

> I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact that we were contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all. Research has to happen somewhere. Where research happens, there will always be bunk projects. Some will fail despite good intentions, some due to negligence. Given that there will always be some waste, you can do a lot worse than putting the $ towards academia. The alternative being a research institution, where researchers are paid actual living wages. There are pros and cons to both models, but academia is undeniably cheaper. Thus, the cost of failure is lower. I didn't mention the third alternative, which is to remove public funding from research altogether. I don't think this is a good idea.