I’m a staff scientist and watch post docs and students get ground up into grant fodder in a regular basis. Sure there are discoveries but at what cost to our mental health?
I think there are two politically convenient roles to academia: (1) allow a country to posture about money is has to spend, case in point are EU flagships which everyone agrees is a big waste but it puts EU on the map, research wise. (2) it keeps smart, will to power people occupied far enough away from real society problems such as racism, climate change, poverty and so on, to stabilize the status quo. Imagine what would happen if people who can do 80 hour weeks churning through genetic data to generate new insights (or similar for different fields) started working in earnest on evidence driven policy change?
I think these roles are more explanatory for the funding of science than the discoveries themselves.
a) I don't think the overlap between postdocs (especially STEM) and those that would work in politics is all that high. I think the vast majority would be working in tech/industry.
b) if this were true we might expect republicans to support government funding for academia over democrats, and the opposite is true.
I don't think the claim in 2) is that they'd necessarily be in politics. It's that they might be way more productive than incentive structures currently permit.
The academy can encourage social climbing, pointless competition, and careerism to the detriment of intellectual honesty, sane policy, and good science. Academic institutions can be moral mazes just like other public or private organizations.
As for (a), I agree that a lot would not be in politics but, if you have seen it first hand, academia sucks the life and minds of out of early stage researchers in a way that other jobs do not. The salary means they are comfortable enough not to complain and no time for it anyway.
This seems to be a common misconception that the slow progress in politics (whatever that means depends on your own political compass) is purely due to the lackluster presentation and evidence finding for policy changes. If the past years have shown anything it's that preconceived notions and ideologies are very hard to change even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
I think there are two politically convenient roles to academia: (1) allow a country to posture about money is has to spend, case in point are EU flagships which everyone agrees is a big waste but it puts EU on the map, research wise. (2) it keeps smart, will to power people occupied far enough away from real society problems such as racism, climate change, poverty and so on, to stabilize the status quo. Imagine what would happen if people who can do 80 hour weeks churning through genetic data to generate new insights (or similar for different fields) started working in earnest on evidence driven policy change?
I think these roles are more explanatory for the funding of science than the discoveries themselves.