&gt; I&#x27;m going to argue that direct public funding is the best way, and by that I mean the historical analogy of direct patronage or crowdfunding research today (e.g. experiment.com).<p>Sadly, you&#x27;ll be hard-pressed to do direct public funding in anything that is not publicly-attractive. You&#x27;ll get a gazillion bazillion dollars for research on canabinoids, and barely a dime on some boring ray-bending materials research problem that will eventually turn out to be easy to integrate on an organic substrate, opening the way for silicon-on-organic optoelectronic devices.<p>The &quot;average citizen or constituent&quot; has a level of scientific education that would prove at least as, if not more toxic than commercial interests. The current (absolutely terrible!) grant funding model is indeed too technical for the &quot;average citizen or constituent&quot;; <i>a frickin&#x27; k-12 textbook is too technical for the average citizen</i>, of course high-level research is too technical! That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s high-level!<p>&gt; If you were motivated to go out and seek an answer for yourself, then perhaps you&#x27;d be less likely to lean on witnesses, testimony, or experts that you don&#x27;t understand.<p>That&#x27;s how we ended up with the anti-vaccines craze. People are motivated to go out and seek an answer for themselves, but they&#x27;re also lazy and seek comforting answers.