Yeah, it's a boondoggle but you never know what's going to come out of research and, more important, when it's going to be useful.

If it wasn't for the Haber-Bosch process originally done to make artificial fertilizer millions of people wouldn't have died in and from World War I!

(OK, not the best example in the world.)

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre