Most research that is pointed towards important things does get funding from NIH. Most research fails. NIH has a bucket of money for every major issue facing the population. Just takes a few PhD's and a hypothesis to write a proposal.
So long as the research has a conclusion, it's not a failure. We learned something. There may be something to be said for whether or not the research is a worthy topic, but that's a different conversation.
Without some research the current President would probably not be healthy enough to be in office, clearly we have to reduce the risk of that happening again.
Failure in big companies is very common too. They lead to reorganisation, retries and new ways of working.
Why is it accepted in the private sector, but not in the public sector?
