“Basic research is the groundwork for more specific and useful research and breakthroughs.”
Understand your thoughts, fully. I have a basic science PhD in molecular biology, and an MD. But it’s impossible to refute your argument except to say one can always claim every seemingly trivial or esoteric discovery could change the world. But 99% won’t. Your argument cannot justify unlimited funding for very average ideas and scientists. There has to be a limit.
From Jones' "Introduction" we have ...
"For the past two decades the nation has lived through an episode that has, with extraordinary speed, laid bare the argument of The Origin of Species. The organism involved was unknown in the ninteenth century, but is now familiar. It is the AIDS virus."
The rest of the book is a modern update of every chapter in Darwin's "Origin."
If basic research adds to our stock of knowledge it is worthwhile. That’s why you do basic reserch even if the knowlege doesn’t make a whit of practical difference.
I really shouldn’t have to explain that to a PhD in molecular biology.