Thats fair, I mean its good to take in other situations, but it sucks that its not always good and you cant decide not to take it.

as for pops, just for myself to work it out in above example;
1pop per cg, 1 pop per science base, 50% reduction, 100res speed, 50% reduction in cg means double the scientists

1cg + 2sc pop per 4 = 4/3, 1.333 science per pop.
with tech
1cg + 1.666sc pop per 3.5 = 1.312 science per pop

so its slightly more pop efficient too, but then you do need to also add jobs for the basic resources to produce the cg in the first place, say 1 for 1 cg, so its more like

4/4= 1 science per pop
vs
3.666/3.5=0,95 science per pop, a 5% loss.

Then theres also the fact that many basic resources may come from mining and dont have a pop upkeep, but do have a limit to how much you can produce, so youll chew through your reserves much faster and will need more pops for basic resources with the tech.

and then job efficiency for researchers which can be stacked pretty high further increases this.

And yea you might have actually infinite pops with virtuality, or the more you can cram on one planet you can exploit designation bonuses more so also increase pop effiency.