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I think the (hopefully) more realistic action plan would be to change the academic system so that the average academic does not need to spend what amounts to the full official working hours on non-research tasks, latest after their first Post Doc, i.e., ~2 years after reaching academic maturity...

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Yeah good point.

Also, many major historical scientific breakthroughs have been just a smart (usually rich) dude/dudette with a lot of free time and not a member of the conventional 'academic' system.

So somehow figure out a way for public to get in on the research instead of government restrictions on who can purchase supplies which limits research to the .0001% who have PhD's.

This opens the door to a lot more mind power going into research.

At this point, I think “a lot of free time” is a more limited resource than supplies and lab equipment. Though I may be biased as I come from an extremely non-capital-intensive field (pure math).

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