Yes, the public should be the main stakeholder if public is funding the project. The problem is, it takes an expert to judge the work of another expert. Wise people outside the local academia should represent the public in such things. Maybe one way is to hire and pay well some foreign professors to do the adversarial oversight/evaluation of our local science workforce. For example, a renowned German scientist hired and payed by French government for 5 years to criticize and oversee funding of French scientists close to his area of expertise. The system has to be more adversarial to weed out/defund the bad activities.