I highly recommend folks watch Particle Fever (for a variety of reasons, and it's on Netflix), but one section particularly stuck out, when the documentary addresses the original LHC location in Texas being de-funded. It shows members of congress arguing how "discovering the origins of the universe" should not be a priority.
I think it's easy to make a very public argument against budgeting research, as the general public doesn't necessarily understand the larger implications of these experiments (at a cursory glance, I rarely see it myself, but I generally give research the benefit of the doubt). Particle Fever addresses this point blank with the discovery of Radio Waves, how nobody really knew what this discovery meant until years/decades later when it became a massive step forward in communication.
My dad is a bit old fashioned, and if you told him in a soundbite that congress was spending money on shrimp treadmills, with no other context he'd immediately make his snap judgement that the government is once again wasting his money. Hard thing to overcome, no matter how important the research might end up being.
I think it's easy to make a very public argument against budgeting research, as the general public doesn't necessarily understand the larger implications of these experiments (at a cursory glance, I rarely see it myself, but I generally give research the benefit of the doubt). Particle Fever addresses this point blank with the discovery of Radio Waves, how nobody really knew what this discovery meant until years/decades later when it became a massive step forward in communication.
My dad is a bit old fashioned, and if you told him in a soundbite that congress was spending money on shrimp treadmills, with no other context he'd immediately make his snap judgement that the government is once again wasting his money. Hard thing to overcome, no matter how important the research might end up being.