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A History of Innovation and Dysfunction At Los Alamos National Laboratory (santafenewmexican.com)
In the past, Los Alamos National Laboratory has done some of the United States' most crucial research and development. Lately, the lab has been dealing with accidents and management problems. Reader DougDot directs us to a report from the Santa Fe New Mexican about the questions surrounding LANL's future. Quoting:
Federal officials told Congress in December that they will put the LANL contract up for competitive bid for only the second time since the lab opened in 1943. The current LANS contract ends Sept 30, 2017. Identifying what went wrong, and why the lab has proven so difficult to manage, will play an important role for the Department of Energy as it seeks out new managers to run the lab. Investigators say the problems stem from repeated management weaknesses, the kind that were supposed to get fixed when the Department of Energy turned to private industry in 2006 to oversee the lab.
It was the first time the federal government had put the lab’s management up for bid, with the idea that a for-profit model, operating under an incentives-based contract, would fix the problems that haunted the nonprofit University of California, which had run the lab since World War II. ... experts, watchdog groups and former lab employees point to an array of problems, from a clash of cultures between the regimented and profit-driven Bechtel and the languorous, research-oriented university; to incentives that may have induced contractors to put a premium on meeting deadlines despite safety risks; to a mix of shoddy accountability and micromanagement on the part of the federal government.
It was the first time the federal government had put the lab’s management up for bid, with the idea that a for-profit model, operating under an incentives-based contract, would fix the problems that haunted the nonprofit University of California, which had run the lab since World War II. ... experts, watchdog groups and former lab employees point to an array of problems, from a clash of cultures between the regimented and profit-driven Bechtel and the languorous, research-oriented university; to incentives that may have induced contractors to put a premium on meeting deadlines despite safety risks; to a mix of shoddy accountability and micromanagement on the part of the federal government.
Two people died while I was there (industrial accident) back in the 80's when it was solely a Berkeley contract. IIRC, White Sands was the private operator and LA was the University operated arms.
I worked there for a time. I didn't see the issues, but I am not aware of everything that went on. I am really proud of the Lab and what it was accomplished for the US and the West in general.
There are ingrained issues at the labs. A new management company can't come in a get rid of existing dysfunctional subcontractors. Their employees often have bad attitudes and live in an entitlement culture. The DOE needs to let new companies displace the existing ones completely and just hire the existing people that want to get jobs done.
With that said, their are sections of the labs that do great work and have talented people. Those are usually in the smaller, more focused programs.
Wow, sounds like the voice of experience from an actual current or past LANL employee. I spent 20 years at LANL. During the last 15 years there my group brought in all of our own funding from external, non-DOE sources for non-weapons work. We had to fight LANL management and the DOE to do this, because they resented us doing work for others.
We brought in work from other agencies in spite of the fact that due to LANL's exorbitant overhead costs the annual FTE rate (the amount of money we we had to charge outside agencies for one year of a staff person's time) was more than $500,000.
These days, due to Bechtel/UC's top-heavy management structure, and the general inefficiency with which they run the place, the overhead rates are even higher than they were when I left the lab in 2005. Current FTE rates for staff at LANL now exceeds $600,000 per year.
The question is: why would anybody want to spend that much money to do scientific research when it could be done elsewhere much more cost effectively?
I grew up in Los Alamos and I worked there during my high school years through some of graduate school. The article completely failed to mention one of the main culprits for a lot of these problems: The Department of Energy. While I do not have knowledge beyond what is in the press for most of the incidents mentioned, the ones where I do mostly include a major role in the problem played by DOE ranging from their screwed up policies to direct involvement. Given this, a new contractor can only do so much.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
Not an employee, but I've done work with/for the labs on a few occasions, and know people who've managed some pretty big contracts. They go out there with intentions of changing things and making progress, but those attitudes are not rewarded, but rather result in political backlash. They come back disenchanted.
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs Information Theory, Bell Labs
Bell Labs, a privately run lab to soak up profits from a government mandated monopoly. Not sure that makes a case for private for profit management. More like publicly funded research utopia.
Atomic Force Microscope, IBM Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM LASER, Bell Labs High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
IBM's accomplishments were all in the pursuit of making more better cheaper things. Any "basic research" that fell out of these efforts were serendipitous happenstance.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Investigators say the problems stem from repeated management weaknesses, the kind that were supposed to get fixed when the Department of Energy turned to private industry in 2006 to oversee the lab.
If you believe that was ever the goal of turning it over to a private company, I've got a bridge to sell you. It was strictly about giving a valuable contract to a big company, done by an administration that Believed(TM) in the divinity of private industry.
I don't have inside information about Los Alamos, but I did know someone at a different national lab that got privatized at the same time. I heard a lot of horror stories from him. Their policies had nothing to do with running an effective research organization, and everything to do with squeezing as much money out of it as they could get.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
>Bell Labs, a privately run lab to soak up profits from a government mandated monopoly. Not sure that makes a case for private for profit management. More like publicly funded research utopia.
Not to mention the core diference is that Bell Labs, being created as a profit sponge, was not a profit seeking enterprise. They may have been owned by one, but because they were specifically *expected* to not make profit they didn't operate like one - and instead was allowed to operate like academia and deliver knowledge instead (some of which, at least, would later be profitable to Bell of course).
The GP correctly pointed out that basic research is a very bad fit for a profit-motive, the only thing Bell Labs prove is that "academia" and charity are not the only ways one could conceivably fund a non-profit research lab. Nobody argued that, that was the case.
That said - government-funded academia is definitely simpler to accomplish - which is why there are millions of government funded research labs around the world (including major multinational ones like CERN) while examples like Bell Labs are few and far between.
Where private enterprise have tried to dabble in the "free reign for researchers lab" model in the past, hoping to cash in on ideas, there are far more dismal failures than successes. Xerox PARC was such an attempt - and while they produced world-class research and innocations - Xerox utterly failed to see it's value or capitalize on it (and basically gave the results to Steve Jobs for free). Ultimately that led to the end of PARC.
Bell Labs didn't survive much past the end of the AT&T monopoly either. It genuinely seems that research labs run by profit-seeking enterprises generally do not work well, and can only succeed when very specific conditions are in place (that are not organically arrived at by market forces).
I would add to the GP's reasons for this that science requires peer review, which works best when the results are shared as widely as possible. Secret-sauce science is not really science at all - and that too is fundamentally incompatible with the profit motive. Profit demands exclusivity but science demands reproducability - which are flat-out contradictory aims. This means that even when, practically, the process can be made to work - the results are tainted as science. Just look at the many resent scandals due to unreproducible drug tests. Evidence based medicine becomes a lot less trustworthy when we water down the scientific standards for what "evidence based" means (though still a lot better than pseudo-science like homeopathy and anti-vaxxers).
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