Advertisement In a single year, Australian universities have farewelled, voluntarily separated from, or made redundant vast numbers of researchers and academics. A huge resource of knowledge and scholarship is now loose in the community. Researchers and research projects have been sacrificed in an effort to scramble out of a COVID-induced financial crisis. But as the American health advocate, Mary Lasker, once commented, "If you think research is expensive, try disease." After 2020, those words surely resonate more than ever. Then again, not all research is about disease or finding a pandemic vaccine or requires billions in investment. And not all researchers work in a lab or spend their days wearing a hairnet while leaning over a microscope syringing substances into vials. The reason why this stereotyped image of the white-coated researcher is the go-to whenever the subject comes up on television news is because medical and biological research is what we prioritise. This is