In the world of government-funded science, there is usually no applied outcome, no direct benefit to the public, and so the (1) struggle to be relevant (which in practical terms means continue to be allowed to do it) is real. As a result, there is no greater conflict than between those who recognize the need to popularize science and those who want it to be what they envision as pure and bereft of populist catering.
Dr. Leon Lederman
In his history of particle physics, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? he wrote that it got the nickname because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing" but he was being modest in pretending this was the result of third-party interest. Lederman was pretending to not take credit for the controversy and the funding, all the while being its biggest evangelist.
He was even being modest in pretending it wasn't him popularizing it exclusively. The Higgs boson had been speculated about for 30 years, it was old news (2)
https://books.google.com/books?id=-v84Bp-LNNIC&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false
(1) Not just in physics. The public did not embrace GMOs because they were never told to be scared of science before even though mutagenesis is literally giving seeds chemical and radiation baths, organic food marketing has to be fine with it. So when organic trade groups did attack GMOs, because it was going to replace legacy mutagenesis, the only benefit offered to the public was 'it gives farmers better yields', which did not resonate all that well. So it goes with basic research. And efforts to claim virtual benefit of government-controlled research, such as each $1 in government funding leads to $1.4, make people who understand simple economics want to pull their hair out.
(2) Yet the science still won. A few years later, String Theory would take the public by storm, and but it had a different outcome. Due to popular acclaim, government began to throw money at people who wanted to show it true - which was likely good at the time but is a career-ending field at this point. When Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" abandoned it, that party was over.
