The mistake is to think that someone's world is more "real" than their neighbor's. That may be arguably true if we talk about farmers or fishermen, but it's much less clear that an entrepreneur's world is more "real" than a university professor's.
But as an academic, I feel like there is more risk of e.g. a project failing and ultimately not being useful, but also a lot more potential. An experiment could uncover the clue leading to curing a major disease, and then you've saved a lot more lives than people you would have fed fishing. There is more risk, but the expected real world value is actually quite high... if it were not grant agencies would not fund it.
I'm pretty sure my elderly dad, who recently had a difficult fight with covid, is only alive because of academic mRNA research.