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The federal government expends vast amounts of money on “research” of innumerable kinds. Many of these expenditures are unwise and unwarranted, falling into the category of pork or overlapping with work that would otherwise be performed by private-sector entities. Public funding for scientific research should largely be limited to basic scientific discoveries or proof-of-principle experiments — which would reasonably be defined as public goods — rather than efforts to extend science into marketable technologies or products.