I remember listening to an NPR podcast and it was talking about wasting money in science. There was that “shrimp fight club” and millions being spent on it. Turns out the money was for a science lab and for students wages and just a bit of money went on the shrimp experiment. Didn’t stop the headlines though. When the scientist went to explain the point to the politicians. They said that the shrimp shells were so resilient and lightweight and studying it could yield military benefits. The politician said that they would only care about that specific use case. The scientist had to explain you don’t get one without the other.