Pure or Applied?

It seems that in the general desire to acknowledge and recognize the contributions of science to our present society, there is a tendency to glamorize the basic sciences at the expense of their engineering counterparts. It is almost as if a descending hierarchy has been established between theory at one end and practice at the other. Perhaps this is not the case, but articles on the danger of neglecting pure research in the interest of its applications and lamenting the distribution of research and development funds are a familiar sight, while it is seldom noted that only rarely can pure research proceed faster than the engineering technology on which it rests. Such articles foster the idea that research is reserved to pure science while the design engineer is relegated to the role of skillful computer.