Now that the LHC is really operating, the machine and the science are very much in the news again. Most of the coverage is quite positive (including some very nice words in our local press), but I have to take issue with the tone of an article that appears in today’s New York Times. (Perhaps some of our readers have noticed your dear correspondent’s obsession with this particular news outlet.) It does celebrate the very first collisions at record beam energies, in rather colorful language, but it also expresses a sense of national loss over the fact that this is happening in Europe, not the United States. “Those spinoffs now will invigorate the careers and labs of Europe, not the United States, pointed out Steven Weinberg,a physicist at the University of Texas in Austin, who won the Nobel Prize for work that will be tested in the new collider,” the article says.
I have to take issue with Weinberg, and by extension reporter Dennis Overbye. (Overbye I don’t worry about disagreeing with, but am I asking for it by going up against a Nobelist?) Is this so devastating for the U.S.? To be sure, I would rather that we have the accelerator here, mostly so that I could go to visit more easily. But then again, I would also like to have universal health care in which everyone can get as much treatment they want without anyone having to pay for it, too. The reality is still appealing. Americans are full participants in these experiments — we have equal access to the data, and have as much chance of discovering things as anyone else. People from the United State have made critical contributions both to the LHC itself and to the detectors. I probably shouldn’t suggest that it couldn’t be done without us, but I like to think that my collaborators around the world would agree that this was done more easily with us involved. We have played key leadership roles in the development and construction of many of components of the experiments, and that leadership will continue as we move into the data analysis phase. Perhaps most importantly, there really is a spirit of cooperation in these experiments — it is not one country against another, but everyone working together towards a common goal of scientific understanding. Everyone involved is going to benefit from the discoveries that we make.
As I write, the LHC status page says “FIRST HIGH INTENSITY STABLE BEAMS.” Discoveries, coming soon.
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I thought the same thing when I read that article, and I’m glad to see an American agreeing with me
I think the main thing that bothers me is the way they refer to Europe versus America, as though Europe were a single country. Much as I may wish national borders were blurred to that extent, it simply isn’t true – this is a global collaboration between many countries, and the US has nothing to complain about considering they still have the majority of scientists working there.
In my opinion, this sort of nationalism has no place in the current scientific community, connected as it is by the Internet, and now the GRID. Just because collisions physically take place under Geneva, that shouldn’t mean anything for the quality or worth of the research that comes out of it, from anyone’s perspective.
Not that I would have minded if the US did go through with the Superconducting Supercollider, although I think these projects are reaching a scale where international collaboration is simply inevitable. But considering the amount of money the US still spends on its military, it does grate a bit.
I was also disappointed with the article in the NY Times. I’ve felt that these articles about the American status of science shows there are still a lot of bad feelings about the SSC (and I think understandably so). This feeling is not representative of the scientific community, I feel. I don’t think the new energy frontier being located at CERN is in any way a travesty for the US.
That being said, I do think it is worth noting that since the US isn’t a CERN member state, Americans don’t have the same status at the laboratory (as far as number of Fellowships/Staff positions available) as member state citizens do. The same of course is true of other non-member state countries like Japan and Russia. That being said, I do know American fellows at CERN and bunches of American CERN users. I’m not familiar with similar policies at Fermilab, so I will be happily corrected if this is the case here too.
The nationalist arguments in the article may not appeal to scientists, but they may be the only way to get through to some politicians (i.e. those who ultimately control the budget).
Stephen, I agree with you, but I feel like they’re sending the wrong message, because what I get from it is “Isolate the US by tooting your own horn and creating new US-only projects.” If they really want what’s best for physics, they should be calling directly for the US to take the -initiative- in new internationally collaborative efforts, and not whine about the physical location of where projects end up being realized – building the LHC in the same place as LEP was motivated by cost savings, in terms the structures already in place, and the expertise already present at CERN.
If astronomers were worried about building telescopes outside of their own countries, we wouldn’t have the advantage of the clear skies in Chile and elsewhere that we make use of today.
It seems the present US administration is relatively enthusiastic about investing in science and the US being involved in international cooperative projects. Congress may be another story.
The press is supposed to inform the public so one can form an informed opinion on a subject. In reality though the press is there to make money so if they have to get ‘creative’ with a story ( Earth eating Black holes, Time travelling Baguette birds and most recently Norwegian Blue Spirals etc) it gets peoples attention but it does them the disservice of misinforming them.