If you look at some of my past posts you will see that I entirely agree with you. Helping fundamental research advance and try to contribute to make a little difference. This is the fundamental base on which everything rests.
Topics like Aids, cancer, feeding the world etc. are very serious stuff.

But this now said, credits, points, badges and all the rest, are the things that allows to have fun at the same time, and keep a combative spirit. So even when I say that I am unhappy at this or that, let me reassure you this is as virtual as the points.

Hypernova, it's beyond me why the manual benchmarks give immediate better points. As noted before, the client benchmark should vary little and is automatic every 120 hours. When you switch sciences, do you run the cache empty before? That may explain as for any quorum dependent project there's an expected initial validation delay of several days. The exception to that is FAAH/HFCC. When a known and a reliable rated client, validation should be immediate upon return of first work.

Hypernova,

the sole mechanic you're affected by here is the different validation rules at research level, the short list from least good to best (my perceptions of what's seen on the Result Status page, THE place to see what's holding up your points)

dddt2
hcmd2
hcc
hpf2
rice
faah
hfcc

faah/hfcc are really ex aequo being zero redundancy only the occasional inconclusive/random revalidation required thorugh a second later or immediately issued verifier/wingman. And of course there's the pyche of the manual cache managers, those that see jobs that already have a wingman or when a batch goes bad suspend their processing (seems for hcmd2 that's currently the case. Got 20 jobs waiting on wingman since the temporary validator fail Thursday night). All is fine since.

Right. When you switch to HPF2 you should expect to wait some time before seeing results validated. Also, be not surprised if it does not come back to your usual daily totals after that delay: from personal experience and from watching projects daily numbers HPF2 is the project which credits the least.

Regarding benchmarks, in my opinion, the only serious reason for forcing benchmarks systematically is when you have changed your overclocking rate. Otherwise WUs may be rated at the former speed during up to 5 days.