It's entirely rational and reasonable for someone to at least ask and receive a decent response to the question, "Why should my tax dollars have been used to funded this research?" Academia should have great responses lined up which garner continued support from the public.

But the fact that we aren't even allowed to ask questions without immediately being shut down as dissenters of all publicly funded research is problematic.

Public research should absolutely be at least partially evaluated by the very people funding it to begin with.