Research and development is akin to religion. To undertake it, particularly as a profession, requires an act of faith. You must believe in the power of human intellect to discover, find, or create knowledge. True believers insist that investment yields progress, betterment of the human condition, just as prayer elicits divine intervention. Skeptics find no evidence in either case.
Progress often follows research and development, just as happy outcomes often follow prayer.
Whether or not one causes the other is beyond proof, or at least it has not been proved. Divinity can be hard of hearing, and not all change is progress. Research and development spread themselves across a spectrum from pure or basic research at one end to product development at the other. More faith is required at the high end of pure research than at the low end of product development. Theoretical physicists may, indeed, approach eschatology at the outer limits of their ruminations, but the progress they achieve defies measurement over the short term.