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What are the politicians there for then?

I'm not being facetious here. Politics is one of the primary avenues of bringing about social change. Ditto civil service.

A PhD should be about novel contributions that increase the sum total of human knowledge.

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Ok but we shouldnt pursue knowledge haphazardly for knowledge sake. There are an infinite number of interesting avenues of inquiry we could send our academics down that would be completely useless. The paths we choose should be guided by the needs of practical application. How else can we value information if not practical application?

"Practical application" is the domain of the engineer, the business person, the sales department, etc. Science and pure curiosity are one and the same.

If we were guided by the needs of practical application we would have devised many ingenious medical probes but never discovered the X-Ray etc.

I agree that we should prioritise STEM, but within STEM the research areas should be decided by the scientists themselves.

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