[CWuestefeld]

Governments should fund science that benefits society and that wouldn't otherwise be happening in a capitalist system.

But that's not what ends up happening. The funding doesn't get allocated such that the total utility would be maximized. Instead, it is directed toward those areas having a constituency that's better organized.

The result is that AIDS research -- its victims being fairly focused in a particular demographic -- gets about 350x more research funding per victim than does COPD. It gets 112x more than Hepatitis C, and 33x more than Alzheimer's disease. [1]

Government funding equals political funding. And this is what leads to scandals like Solaris, too. The government is not able to make rational decisions, as much as we might tell ourselves that it does. In a democracy, the funding will go to those causes that can muster the most votes.

[1] Source: http://www.fairfoundation.org/factslinks.htm