Eric: I strongly agree with you emphasis on scientific value. The BAA has had a strong ethos of scientific research for its entire existence.
In my view we should be investing more heavily in spectroscopy. We’ve been doing photometry very productively for well over a century now. Precision astrometry is a more recent phenomenon but now well established. Spectroscopy remains a field sadly neglected by most amateurs, though some impressive work is being performed by BAA members. I say this as someone who is not (yet) a spectroscopist.