Everytime I think about goverment schemes on research funding and where you have to describe “Impact of research”, this thread beautifully describes how science has essentially progressed by looking at everyday phenomena before they could be translated to “human application”.
Since we're talking about funding of absurd research by NIH and other federal agencies, the funded scientists:
- watching flies fuck
- giving rats massages
- spending years digging into why jellyfish glow
- tracking penguin poop from space
- using horseshoe crab blood