He’s the one money will support but there is precedent for that to not matter. See Clinton v Obama, Jeb v Trump and various smaller races.

Because we fund basically jack shit of scientific investigation that is just for the sake of investigation. A vast majority of funding is purpose driven which puts big blinders on the field. Failure of this type of idea could easily end the career of a new investigator or postdoc.

There’s a lot to rant about the state of modern research but a lack of funding is nearly always the biggest reason for why something seemingly obvious in hindsight wasn’t discovered earlier.

Affluent enough someone could spend a couple M in the 80s?