Why are you asking us? I'm not a research scientist/funding expert. There are people whose job it is to decide that, and they decided it was. I trust them to do their jobs, just like they trust me to do my job when they need my services.
Why do you trust these people when for the most part, they are unelected bureaucrats serving their own self-interests?
Because it's not like that everywhere in the world. For example, here, to be able to get funding, you need to pass a panel interview of researchers who are experienced in the area of your research. Our system employs "hordes of research experts" to shake down most inadequate ones, and push the rest to the actual researchers to further filter them.
IIRC, many if not most EU countries employ similar methods.
> they are unelected bureaucrats serving their own self-interests
You seem to be pushing an agenda, not asking questions in good faith.
My agenda is that I think it's completely rationale to ask about the merits of publicly funded research and debate that topic. You may not like that question or my responses, but that is my assertion here.
> completely rational to ask about the merits of publicly funded research
Sure, but asking asking non-experts on some web forum to make guesses at the answers, and insulting the people whose job it is to do this work based on your assumptions of how it works, is a bad way to go about answering that question.
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