>Yes American science as a family of organizations deserves scrutiny and critiques. Funding these organizations is not an absolute public good.
They deserve scrutiny and critique from an informed point of view on what science can accomplish for the public, that is, what science can do for the absolute public good. "This doesn't work like I thought it did!" is not necessarily, in and of itself, an absolute public bad. It is, unfortunately, a cost of doing business in employing specialized labor to do specialized work.
Driving a truck doesn't work how the broad public thinks it does, either.
They deserve scrutiny and critique from an informed point of view on what science can accomplish for the public, that is, what science can do for the absolute public good. "This doesn't work like I thought it did!" is not necessarily, in and of itself, an absolute public bad. It is, unfortunately, a cost of doing business in employing specialized labor to do specialized work.
Driving a truck doesn't work how the broad public thinks it does, either.