basic research is really important, even the weird stuff, because you never know what will end up being useful

e.g.

• brushing rat babies now saves every preemie $10k and various health problems
• studying frog skin lead to rehydration therapy
• studying fruit fly sex habits helped eliminate screwworm
• studying Gila monster venom lead to the invention of GLP-1 agonists
• etc etc etc

basic research returns somewhere between “150% of its costs” to “literally all economic growth”

A study of hundreds of major manufacturing firms in the 1970s found that increasing basic research spending had three to five times more impact on productivity growth than other research and development investments

it’s really hard to know ahead of time what will be useful

the gov should specialize in really early stage stuff bc industry will handle late stage

the usual stuff about NIH/NSF grants being too risk averse etc (+1)