A year ago, if you read about government funding being used to measure the velocity of a sneeze, it would have been tempting to call it “wasteful spending.” But, much of this seemingly wasteful research is now saving lives. Why do we need government funding for science? A thread.

— Jen Heemstra (@jenheemstra) April 26, 2020

There’s hardly any “wasteful” research, considering that the future is unknown and that 99% of the time the people declaring research to be wasteful don’t even understand what is being investigated.