I have to disagree with your characterization of modern biology. I was more trying to make a point on the information value of talks versus papers. Your comment reminds me a frequent quarrel at my school on how math is superior to physics, which is superior to bio/chem. Of course everything in the humanities is "worthless." I don't what to attribute to you beliefs that you don't hold, but this is the undercurrent that I'm feeling: http://xkcd.com/435/

I do think there are many great papers coming out in biology today, and scientists are still fully capable of writing insightful books and essays for the general public. I can see why some papers feel like a collection of trivial data, but trust me, beautiful and convincing data is well appreciated. While exaggeration of results is also a problem, we are trained to read all papers with a critical eye. There are always good papers and bad, but here are some links to ones that I think are good:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6715/full/397168a... http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7058/abs/nature03... http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(09)00963-5 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5928/807.abstract (Hopefully you'll be able to access these - if not, that's a whole nother problem about academic papers)

I won't comment too much on your generalizations, but I want to note that it is hard to predict a priori which findings from academic research will become useful for industry later on. I think you'll find defunding academic biology to be a pretty unpopular viewpoint. Perhaps you could elaborate on what serious biological research means? (Plus, I'd say paying graduate students 30k/yr is a pretty efficient labor force)