Your focusshould be on something that catches his interest. Depending on the child I’d say choose stuff that is easily to learn but has some depth too it. If you want to invest some time do some projects with him, to give easy goals to achieve and continue. Be the rabbit hole.
Not from the us but scientific research is usually very costly . They need funding to stay at the technological edge and therefore accept funding and therefore do some “shady” studies or whatever strings you might imagine.