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‘Was duck penis study an appropriate use of taxpayer money?’ ran a headline from conservative US media outlet Fox News in 2013. The associated article attacked a US government-funded animal behavior study on duck genitalia conducted at Yale University as a wasteful use of federal money. Two years earlier, another scientific study had been held up for ridicule: ‘Your tax dollars at work: shrimp on treadmills’ (Fox News 2011). Although the immediate target of the attack was different, the main goal was the same: to criticize the National Science Foundation for wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in support of scientific projects that were supposed to seem obviously trivial to a layperson. To make the point more vivid, the earlier story included a rather fascinating video from the study, featuring – what else? – a shrimp exercising on a miniature treadmill, while a scientist took notes on its performance.
Mocking randomly selected examples of ‘silly’ science has become a standard rhetorical tool for US Republicans who want to complain about the federal government’s wastefulness (Greenfieldboyce 2011). In a new line of attack, the Trump administration proposed major cuts to all federal programs supporting climate change research on the grounds that it clashed with the country’s energy needs and economic vitality (Rice and King 2017; Waldman 2017). This time, scientists were charged with actively harming American economic interests. Since both the level and distribution of public funding for basic scientific research is increasingly coming under attack, it is important to consider what normative force, if any, these charges may possess, and what arguments are available to counter them. This requires being clear about the justifications offered for supporting science with public funds, and what these justifications imply about the degree and kind of political intervention that is appropriate in decisions about the distribution of funds. Justification becomes necessary when the value of an activity can no longer be taken as self-evident. In the second half of the twentieth century, research in the natural sciences consistently enjoyed high levels of public support and financial investment from the state. Thus while political theorists dedicated considerable attention to defending funding for the arts, the humanities and environmental preservation in the face of low...