Comment by saithound
4 hours ago
Not so relevant to this discussion, since if you are funded by patronage networks, you need to justify your work to your patron. If you are funded by grants or public research funds, you need to justify your work to the general public.
They did that... I take it you don't accept their justification, but that doesn't mean an attempt wasn't made.
I'm another part of the general public, and I accept their justification.
We can all vote, or use whatever levers our political system gives us to show our acceptance/rejection of basic research, but IMO basic research is absolutely necessary.
> you need to justify your work to your patron.
Assuming this is true, how did they justify their work, which had, at the time, no practical application?