Extravagent Space-Time Experiment Upholds Einstein, But Was It Worth It?

As the years have passed since Albert Einstein's death in 1955, as brilliant and enormous as his contributions were to the human understanding of reality, we have come to learn and accept that the man was not infallible. Even if he were, leave it to the insatiable curiosity of physicists to put his theories to the test. Many would be surprised to hear that, even within the scientific community, debate occurs over whether our efforts and money are worth the knowledge that they buy. The most recent mission subject to this debate was that of "Gravity Probe B", which was the culmination of some 750 million dollars of funding and nearly half a century of work. The goal of Gravity Probe B was to verify the accuracy of certain predictions made by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The results of the mission were released a little over a month ago, and reactions from scientists have ranged from epic victory to complete waste of time. The following are two articles - one published by NASA, who ran the mission, and the other published by Scientific American, which provides a less intimate perspective - describing the results and analyzing their worth (along with details about the mission, which was pretty awesome). The difference in tone is almost comedic.

NASA - http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=troubled-probe-upholds-einstein

It may be a shocker to many that such self-proclaimed objective thinkers as scientists can still succumb to the addictiveness of curiosity, despite the costs. It is in such contrast to many people of religion, who accept what they are told, for better or worse, with complete faith and conviction. Or to many spiritual individuals who accept what they see, feel and experience without the need for physical proof or rationalization. There are obvious benefits and drawbacks to each approach for finding truth. Perhaps some sort of middle ground is best.