OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend more money to model the collision! Will insects survive or just single-celled life? Let's spend millions on computer simulations of the collision itself, answering important questions about geology and previous extinction level events. Let's figure out precisely how bad it will be.
vs
OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend some money developing a plan to mitigate the risk - move the comet out of the way, or destroy it, or in the worst case, prepare an "ark" so that humans can survive, or at least launch some of our most precious info into space (or on the moon) so that a future alien civilization will at least know we existed.
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Obviously, the first case has no merit.