If you can think of a better way to fund science, let's hear it. There's no funding pathway that is clear of humans, and it is humans who exercise their preferences in funding paths.

BTW we just detected gravity waves, which opens up the first new way of perceiving the universe since Galileo. And we can't really explain about 95% of the known mass-energy of the universe. Oh, and we just figured out a way to custom-edit genomes.

Science is doing just fine right now.