Don't forget that peer review is taking place in "tribal environments" that exist in all academic disciplines - authors belongs to different camps/groups and the question if peer reviewers belong to the same camp or opposite one that the author of the paper?!
Now since there are only 1-3 peer reviewers that will look into your paper probability of rejecting a good paper is ~50% or more, especially if some field is dominated by one camp.
I think peer review process that exists now is outdated and in a way of good publications...
Verisign certificate? Minimum $349/year - and you call it "get rid of middleman"?! PKI is not the best solution - it creates a lot of middleman by itself.
Well, I agree with most of your arguments about investment in basic research - no doubt basic research is indication of healthy society. Let society do just that - invest in thousands basic research projects and wait for return! But you missed the point against one huge accelerator project - it sucks all the money suffocating all other high energy research experiments and all your hopes for future spinoffs. Large accelerator project is a monopoly, huge factory specializing in begging money from government agencies, advertising nonexisting achievements and slave laboring people from around the world.
On the quantitative side of estimates of returns... well, it is open for discussion but it is good that people begin to think about such things and not just "Higgs bosons":-)
"Right now we have machines that about break even, ie. they generate enough energy to run themselves"
Not true, they about break even "theoretically" - no single watt of energy released is used.
What this people don't tell us is how to use this energy. If I remember correctly energy that is useful and not used for supporting the burning plasma is released in the form of high energy neutrons. How one can use the energy of these neutrons?! By placing fusion reactor in the core of the nuclear reactor and use it as additional fuel as well as for isotope production.
The whole idea of fusion reactors was always fueled by DOD and cold war.
I never heard arguments how to use this energy in any clean way. If you really want to use fusion energy - point your solar arrays to the Sun or use plasma winds instead.
Why idea of "spin-offs" is being used so many times and without success?! May be because it is wrong:) (Historical remark - it was the main argument during SSC hearing in 1993)
"semiconductor technology would be unthinkable without basic research in quantum mechanics in the first decades of the 20th century" - true, but now think how little money were spent on basic research in quantum mechanics? And how many Scientists were around without $B funding copared to the bunch of administrators these days.
If one follow reasoning and facts (as true scientific research should do) then conclusion is:
Less money - more science:)
Spinoffs are only applicable to the small "seed" research programs; any large research program should have clear measurable goals with price tag visible; it is intrincically unefficient and a waist of money and doesn't bring any spinoffs.
I was attending Snowmass in 1996 and what now?
The same words, the same people talking about larger and larger and larger accelerators... That's all this people can do - the science this people can do is highly overestimated. How can I prove this statement? Lets try to be realistic. Any enterprise including this scientific enterprise can be characterized by some set of parameters. For instance price/value ratio is coming to mind if compared with P/E ratio for publicly traded stock.
Price for large accelerators always runs in the Billions of dollars. What is the value? Seriously? On the shoulders of discoveries made in 1970-1980 LEP was build and produced first collisions in 1987. Does anybody remember that time?! - Higgs (it was in the 30-50 GeV range for sure that time:) was one of the primary goals for LEP. Not a trace. But billions of dollars were spent and the wheel starts turning. Top quark was discovered at Fermilab in 1996. If you consider the value of discovering first 5 quarks and neutrinos as 1.0 then the top quark will hardly run as 1/5-1/10. It is like discovering that your valet is in your pocket. LHC - another billion dollars enterprise - is due by the end of the decade and data taking is going to take much more years. Even if the Higgs will be found there it's value is already devalues by so many years of speculations and I wouldn't give it more that ½. And with all the background at LHC - can anybody guarantee that Higgs will be found? Is it the right place to look? I would suggest that P/E in the accelerator high energy physics runs now in the $1B/1.0 range and is very risky.
Consider some other physics experiments in solid state, plasma, satellite, material science etc. Price tag runs in the $1-10M range. Consider 20-50 such experiments - even if one is successful one will have P/E = $100M/1.0.
Let me suggest that building large accelerators is very unwise and very risky scientific project. This field is at least ~10 overpriced and overvalued. It has also 10 times more people that necessary for healthy development. And please don't tell that discovering supersymmetric partners and higgs particle is of grand important to the science - do reality check, ask your friends from different fields "How much importance do scientists outside your immediate community attach to your fervent quest for the Higgs boson?"
This bubble is going to burst. Run, run away as soon as possible...:) Former hep (experimental) physicist
Slashdot Mirror
It seems there is nothing credible in this report... And who is michael anyway?
Don't forget that peer review is taking place in "tribal environments" that exist in all academic disciplines - authors belongs to different camps/groups and the question if peer reviewers belong to the same camp or opposite one that the author of the paper?! Now since there are only 1-3 peer reviewers that will look into your paper probability of rejecting a good paper is ~50% or more, especially if some field is dominated by one camp. I think peer review process that exists now is outdated and in a way of good publications...
Verisign certificate? Minimum $349/year - and you call it "get rid of middleman"?! PKI is not the best solution - it creates a lot of middleman by itself.
Well, I agree with most of your arguments about investment in basic research - no doubt basic research is indication of healthy society. Let society do just that - invest in thousands basic research projects and wait for return! But you missed the point against one huge accelerator project - it sucks all the money suffocating all other high energy research experiments and all your hopes for future spinoffs. Large accelerator project is a monopoly, huge factory specializing in begging money from government agencies, advertising nonexisting achievements and slave laboring people from around the world. On the quantitative side of estimates of returns ... well, it is open for discussion but it is good that people begin to think about such things and not just "Higgs bosons" :-)
"Right now we have machines that about break even, ie. they generate enough energy to run themselves" Not true, they about break even "theoretically" - no single watt of energy released is used. What this people don't tell us is how to use this energy. If I remember correctly energy that is useful and not used for supporting the burning plasma is released in the form of high energy neutrons. How one can use the energy of these neutrons?! By placing fusion reactor in the core of the nuclear reactor and use it as additional fuel as well as for isotope production. The whole idea of fusion reactors was always fueled by DOD and cold war. I never heard arguments how to use this energy in any clean way. If you really want to use fusion energy - point your solar arrays to the Sun or use plasma winds instead.
Why idea of "spin-offs" is being used so many times and without success?! May be because it is wrong :) (Historical remark - it was the main argument during SSC hearing in 1993)
:)
"semiconductor technology would be unthinkable without basic research in quantum mechanics in the first decades of the 20th century" - true, but now think how little money were spent on basic research in quantum mechanics? And how many Scientists were around without $B funding copared to the bunch of administrators these days.
If one follow reasoning and facts (as true scientific research should do) then conclusion is:
Less money - more science
Spinoffs are only applicable to the small "seed" research programs; any large research program should have clear measurable goals with price tag visible; it is intrincically unefficient and a waist of money and doesn't bring any spinoffs.
Rockshell
I was attending Snowmass in 1996 and what now? The same words, the same people talking about larger and larger and larger accelerators... That's all this people can do - the science this people can do is highly overestimated. How can I prove this statement? Lets try to be realistic. Any enterprise including this scientific enterprise can be characterized by some set of parameters. For instance price/value ratio is coming to mind if compared with P/E ratio for publicly traded stock. Price for large accelerators always runs in the Billions of dollars. What is the value? Seriously? On the shoulders of discoveries made in 1970-1980 LEP was build and produced first collisions in 1987. Does anybody remember that time?! - Higgs (it was in the 30-50 GeV range for sure that time:) was one of the primary goals for LEP. Not a trace. But billions of dollars were spent and the wheel starts turning. Top quark was discovered at Fermilab in 1996. If you consider the value of discovering first 5 quarks and neutrinos as 1.0 then the top quark will hardly run as 1/5-1/10. It is like discovering that your valet is in your pocket. LHC - another billion dollars enterprise - is due by the end of the decade and data taking is going to take much more years. Even if the Higgs will be found there it's value is already devalues by so many years of speculations and I wouldn't give it more that ½. And with all the background at LHC - can anybody guarantee that Higgs will be found? Is it the right place to look? I would suggest that P/E in the accelerator high energy physics runs now in the $1B/1.0 range and is very risky. Consider some other physics experiments in solid state, plasma, satellite, material science etc. Price tag runs in the $1-10M range. Consider 20-50 such experiments - even if one is successful one will have P/E = $100M/1.0. Let me suggest that building large accelerators is very unwise and very risky scientific project. This field is at least ~10 overpriced and overvalued. It has also 10 times more people that necessary for healthy development. And please don't tell that discovering supersymmetric partners and higgs particle is of grand important to the science - do reality check, ask your friends from different fields "How much importance do scientists outside your immediate community attach to your fervent quest for the Higgs boson?" This bubble is going to burst. Run, run away as soon as possible... :) Former hep (experimental) physicist