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P1I disagree that direct improvement of human lives must always be the highest priority of scientific inquiry. Its central purpose can instead be advancing our understanding of the world, including phenomena with no foreseeable practical application. Human welfare remains a vital outcome, but should not invariably determine which questions deserve investigation.

P2Applied science, the deliberate targeting of research at defined human problems, has undeniably delivered transformative outcomes. Vaccine development, water purification, renewable energy engineering, and evidence-based medicine all represent science oriented explicitly towards human welfare. No serious thinker would dismiss the moral weight of these achievements.

P3However, much of the foundational knowledge underpinning such breakthroughs emerged from research with no immediate practical intent. Quantum mechanics was developed as a theoretical endeavour to describe sub-atomic behaviour; its practical implications in semiconductors, computing, and medical imaging were unimagined at the time of its formulation. Similarly, research into the genetic structure of bacteria, motivated purely by curiosity about molecular biology, later provided the intellectual scaffolding for CRISPR-based gene editing. When institutions demand that science justify itself exclusively through near-term human benefit, they risk defunding precisely the exploratory work that generates future revolutions.