[yawnxyz]

The scientists who DO usually start from goals, don't want to grope around "just for the science" and spend ten years on how "tail spike protein x interacts with blah blah blah"... the ones who aren't blind are usually cast away and made fun of not being "pure scientists" and cast away as "translational". It's an entire caste system lots of people have created for themselves.

So these "translational" people either go back obediently to doing the pure stuff, or they just leave and go to biotech / pharma.

The field is better off viewing those two as two sides of the same coin, but to keep people in the walls they've built a "if you do translational science, you're an outcast and should never come back!"