The NIH and NSF funding doesn&#x27;t appear to have that much in the way of low-level decision making by politicians looking for election day limelight.<p>Of course there is some, such as disparaging attacks on why we should put shrimps on treadmills, to the other extreme where the government, following public demand, funded a lot of HIV&#x2F;AIDS research.<p>Also, as counter-example, the US government funds research in tropical diseases, not because it&#x27;s a great photo-op for the next election, but also not completely altruistically - the military wants to be able to go into tropics and not have many of its soldiers die.<p>So the evidence so far says that your supposition isn&#x27;t the whole picture by far.