End of a Scientific Legend?

pacopico writes to mention the sorry state of the well-known Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sixty years ago, it was at the forefront of the race for the Atomic bomb. Nowadays, "smugness can breed complacency, and complacency carelessness. In recent years the laboratory has been in the news not for its successes but its failures.The result is a change of management, which the story goes on to discuss in great detail. It begs the question - can Los Alamos hang on as a prestigious place or is it too late for the supercomputing powerhouse and weapons lab?"

Comments

It didn't jump; it was pushed

[RobertB-DC]

Just last Monday, NPR's Fresh Air program featured investigative reporter Sharon Weinberger, who has just written a book titled Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld. In the interview, Weinberger breaks down how the US Military has gone from bad to worse in terms of science, rejecting even its own internal peer-review system (including the JASONs) in favor of administration-pleasing junk science and "imaginary weapons".

Of course, the problem isn't new -- she points out in the interview that the Clinton administration was just as quick as anyone else to slam the door on global warming results that didn't match their polices. And in fact, the first two-thirds of the interview are studiously neutral in tone. But by the end, after host Terri Gross and Weinberger have laid the factual foundation, the Bush administration comes out looking pretty pathetic. With the current administration's secrecy, paranoia (the Wen Ho Lee fiasco at Los Alamos gets particular attention), and general disregard for the scientific method, it's pretty clear that if Los Alamos falls, it didn't jump -- it was pushed.

begs the question?

[John Harrison]

It does not beg the question. It raises the question. Begging the question is something else entirely and if you aren't 100% sure that you know exactly what it means you should probably never use the term.

Re:begs the question?

[egomaniac]

It does not beg the question. It raises the question. Begging the question is something else entirely and if you aren't 100% sure that you know exactly what it means you should probably never use the term.

You are, of course, incorrect. "Begs the question" used to refer to a specific kind of logical fallacy. But the usage of this idiom has changed, and it is now a synonym for "raises the question", which can also in some (very rare) contexts refer to a specific kind of logical fallacy.

Arguing that you are right and common usage is wrong is like arguing that LASER, RADAR, and SCUBA should be written in all caps (they're acronyms, after all!), "e-mail" should be hyphenated, and a "computer" is a person who performs calculations by hand. The usage of these words, along with the phrase "begs the question", have changed, and it's time to accept that and move on. You might as well argue that we should all go back to speaking Old English -- it's simply not going to happen.

Nothing new

[Jason1729]

The US has already fallen way behind in scientific research.

America scrapped its supercollider while the Europeans built their LHC at CERN, so Europe will lead nuclear research for at least the next 20 years. Europe and Japan are doing advanced medical research while the US cuts funding and asks if its ethical to use stem cells.

The US has decided to abandon the Hubble telescope and allow it to burn up in the atmosphere, virtually abandon manned space travel, and divert most of the space research budget to militarizing space. Meanwhile the ESA is doing most of the space research and even China is launching manned missions.

Los Alamos losing its shine is such a minor thing compared to the rest of the US scientific community, it's barely worth noticing. The sad thing is by the time enough people notice the US is falling behind, it will be too late.

Many "failures" were overblown

[Anonymous Coward]

I am staff scientist at another DOE lab and spent time at Los Alamos as a graduate fellow a few years ago. From the coverage in the media and from the comments of many politicians (many of whom stood to gain much if UC were to lose out in favor of universities/companies from their home state in the LANL bidding wars), one would think that Los Alamos was full of nothing but incompetence, dishonesty, and arrogance. That simply was not the case -- Los Alamos has had a very similar track record when compared to both other government labs and industry. This was pointed out in a very informative and insightful opinion piece that appeared in Physics Today:

http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-57/iss-12/p60.html

While Los Alamos has certainly had its share of fiascos, I think a lot of bad press they received was because 1) They are the most visible government lab, and 2) Many politicians hoped that if they could humiliate the lab management enough, someone from their state could end up with the (now extremely lucrative) management contract.

(Posted anonymously out of fear of DOE muckety-mucks)