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CERN and the LHC are to me prime examples of bad science. You build huge machines at incredible cost, wasting hundreds of thousands of man hours of brilliant yo

CERN and the LHC are to me prime examples of bad science. You build huge machines at incredible cost, wasting hundreds of thousands of man hours of brilliant young people’s time. They are paid almost nothing (a checkout clerk at a Swiss supermarket makes more than a PhD student at CERN). Then you string along a subset of those for years, exploiting them for further cheap labor, somehow making them believe they are “lucky” to get that opportunity (a postdoc at CERN pays a fraction of what you can make at Google Zurich). In the time between experiments people only ever see simulated data, leading to a rude awakening when actual experimental data comes in (c.f. ALICE’s desaster of a analysis Pipeline). Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Defunding the super collider in the 90s in the US was probably one of the best science policy decisions they made.

whymauri 7y ago
I kinda wish this comment focused more on bad science rather than bad pay. If bad pay implied bad science then most of science is bad! I suppose I'd be much more interested in learning about the latter half of your comment (specific scientific failures).
eganist 7y ago
> Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Every statement in your diatribe would seem to be predicated by the assumption that discoveries in theoretical physics (what you're complaining about) will result in revolutionary changes to your day-to-day experience (kinda i.e. applied physics) in a short enough span of time that you can actually enjoy them with an able body. Probably not. Flight/space and semiconductors were notable exceptions, and they were largely driven by the century of hot and cold war that we know to be the 1900s. Bad science is science that fundamentally doesn't yield a new understanding of the world, either by falsifying theories or confirming them. What you described is: 1. failure to meet exaggerated lay expectations, and 2. poor working conditions in the nonprofit space. #2 (and possibly #1 depending on where the theoretical discoveries take us) can largely be resolved by pouring more money into science, not less. I'll point back to our century of war if you need past precedent. Edit: removed a line that was unnecessarily insulting. Sorry about that.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Indeed, flight and space have applications, which is why they (completely justifiably) get more funding. People seem to forget this, but the space shuttle alone was funded over 15x more than the LHC was, and by a single country rather than many.
- orbifold 7y ago
  > Every statement in your diatribe would seem to be predicate... I would be happy if they found any experimental evidence for their predictions. If you have followed the field basically the majority opinion was that supersymmetry at the LHC would be inevitably found, as long as the Higgs mass was in a certain range (naturalness argument). Turns out it (narrowly) was in that range but supersymmetry was not found anyways. Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science in that way, because no new phenomena had actually been observed/measured and needed model building. Of course there is nothing inherently bad with conjecture or theory, but given the fact that there are lots of unsolved problems in physics on which progress was made in that time, a lot of what they were doing seems like a huge waste of time. Philip Anderson made his case for refocussing physics a long time ago: See his case against against the SSC: https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t... and "More is Different" https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393.
  - peteradio 7y ago
    > Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science. Perhaps that wouldn't have gone on so long if the SSC wasn't fucking cancelled in '93.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    > Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science in that way, because no new phenomena had actually been observed/measured That is an interesting observation. Would you be willing to guess specifically why there was such a long gap between the LHC and the previous collider? The answer is already in your comment.
knzhou 7y ago
Nobody forces academics to work for low pay. I mean, that's what I'm doing right now and I certainly don't feel exploited. > Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Suppose all TeV-scale colliders had been defunded in the 90s, including the LHC. Then we would have forever been stuck with the strong suspicion that a Higgs is there, but no proof, along with untested but plausible-sounding well-motivated speculation over what else could be. Is that not worse than actually knowing?
- glofish 7y ago
  While it is true that nobody forces you to work for low pay - there is definitely misleading advertising at play. Most young people that pick science do not understand the "real" rules of science, and what it takes to "succeed". Being a good, reliable, hard-working scientists will not ensure your success. Whereas in many if not most jobs, being good at the job itself usually suffices.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    I know what the rules are. In fact the community seems to be extremely transparent about it -- there are sites that keep track of all job offers out there for you, along with historical statistics. The struggle for jobs is the result of the government funding structure, plus supply and demand. It's not perfect, but it's infinitely preferably to the older system, where you could reliably do science only if you had great personal wealth, or were favored by somebody who did.
    - glofish 7y ago
      First and foremost, we are talking in general, about young scientists. Do you think they all know what they sign up for? I for one, having seen many hundreds of them, I don't think so. Then I will say, job offers are not relevant here. Who gets the job offer? What do they have to actually do in that job? Where are they going to be in 10 years? What kind of life, job security, job conditions, career advancement prospects do you have over the long term? For most scientists, these are the most nebulous concepts ever. You may think you know what the job is - maybe, I wouldn't know. What I do know that most people do not understand that a PI (principal investigator) at a University does nothing even remotely similar to what a postdoc (who wants to be a PI does)/ The churn and exploitation is very common.
oefrha 7y ago
> They are paid almost nothing (a checkout clerk at a Swiss supermarket makes more than a PhD student at CERN). Then you string along a subset of those for years, exploiting them for further cheap labor, somehow making them believe they are “lucky” to get that opportunity (a postdoc at CERN pays a fraction of what you can make at Google Zurich). That’s not unique to LHC, or CERN, or physics. It’s a general problem of academia, where PhDs and postdocs are paid a pittance compared to what they could otherwise earn in the industry. This problem is especially bad in high energy physics of course, since jobs are especially limited, and it’s the brightest people competing against each other, who could easily land jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. > Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Standard Model works exceedingly well at LHC. No one was actually sure about BSM (beyond Standard Model) so there was no “promise” really. Or the promise is: we may see something interesting, or we may disprove some otherwise interesting theories. > Defunding the super collider in the 90s in the US was probably one of the best science policy decisions they made. Cancelling SSC was such a stupid waste of labor and money, it’s painful to see someone touting it as a triumph. Two words: defense budget. Enough said. Disclosure: I worked for CMS for a while. (Not physically at CERN; was doing data analysis for CMS in the U.S.)
- zhdc1 7y ago
  Want to throw out that PhD students at CERN & ETH/EPFL are still paid a living salary. Go outside of the ETH system and you can make a fair amount more (nothing considerable, but equivalent to what high school teacher in the states, which for a PhD student is nothing to sneeze at).
- orbifold 7y ago
  I'm pretty positive that people made firm predictions and bets that the LHC will see super partners (because otherwise the "naturalness" argument would go away). Whether it would be the MSSM or something else was up for debate, but people thought it would be more likely than not that they would see them if the Higgs was found in the predicted energy range. In any case physics departments at top universities all over the world are stacked with phenomenologists that made their careers on working out these predictions. Anderson made an argument against the SSC https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t..., which I pretty much agree with. Science funding is finite and physics talent in a country as well. Many really good students are funnelled into dead end careers in high-energy physics (whether theoretical or experimental). It's just a huge waste of human potential, especially given the fact of how ruthlessly they are exploited. I know people in the field, a hiring decision between three people was recently described to me as a choice between a 'social case' and two competent workers, one of which happens to be a friend of mine. Funnily enough lot's of institutions doing fundamental research in high energy physics either also do military research or receive military funding. Most of Witten's work for example has been funded by the Department of Energy. The whole reason CERN was build in a neutral country was because people worried that a post nuclear arms race would break out otherwise. In France one of the major institutes contributing to particle physics (Saclay Nuclear Research Centre) also developed their nuclear arsenal and is located next to a major arms manufacturers research center (Thalys).
magicalhippo 7y ago
> ALICE’s desaster of a analysis Pipeline Any references to this? First I've heard of it.
- orbifold 7y ago
  You can take a look here: https://github.com/alisw/AliRoot https://github.com/alisw/AliRoot
dekhn 7y ago
it is true that moving protobufs is more profitable than moving protons, but I think CERN represents a fundamentally interesting and important scientific endeavor.

whymauri 7y ago

I kinda wish this comment focused more on bad science rather than bad pay. If bad pay implied bad science then most of science is bad! I suppose I'd be much more interested in learning about the latter half of your comment (specific scientific failures).

eganist 7y ago

> Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Every statement in your diatribe would seem to be predicated by the assumption that discoveries in theoretical physics (what you're complaining about) will result in revolutionary changes to your day-to-day experience (kinda i.e. applied physics) in a short enough span of time that you can actually enjoy them with an able body. Probably not. Flight/space and semiconductors were notable exceptions, and they were largely driven by the century of hot and cold war that we know to be the 1900s. Bad science is science that fundamentally doesn't yield a new understanding of the world, either by falsifying theories or confirming them. What you described is: 1. failure to meet exaggerated lay expectations, and 2. poor working conditions in the nonprofit space. #2 (and possibly #1 depending on where the theoretical discoveries take us) can largely be resolved by pouring more money into science, not less. I'll point back to our century of war if you need past precedent. Edit: removed a line that was unnecessarily insulting. Sorry about that.

knzhou 7y ago
Indeed, flight and space have applications, which is why they (completely justifiably) get more funding. People seem to forget this, but the space shuttle alone was funded over 15x more than the LHC was, and by a single country rather than many.
orbifold 7y ago
> Every statement in your diatribe would seem to be predicate... I would be happy if they found any experimental evidence for their predictions. If you have followed the field basically the majority opinion was that supersymmetry at the LHC would be inevitably found, as long as the Higgs mass was in a certain range (naturalness argument). Turns out it (narrowly) was in that range but supersymmetry was not found anyways. Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science in that way, because no new phenomena had actually been observed/measured and needed model building. Of course there is nothing inherently bad with conjecture or theory, but given the fact that there are lots of unsolved problems in physics on which progress was made in that time, a lot of what they were doing seems like a huge waste of time. Philip Anderson made his case for refocussing physics a long time ago: See his case against against the SSC: https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t... and "More is Different" https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393.
- peteradio 7y ago
  > Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science. Perhaps that wouldn't have gone on so long if the SSC wasn't fucking cancelled in '93.
- knzhou 7y ago
  > Arguably a lot of particle phenomenology in the last 20+ years was bad science in that way, because no new phenomena had actually been observed/measured That is an interesting observation. Would you be willing to guess specifically why there was such a long gap between the LHC and the previous collider? The answer is already in your comment.

knzhou 7y ago

Nobody forces academics to work for low pay. I mean, that's what I'm doing right now and I certainly don't feel exploited. > Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Suppose all TeV-scale colliders had been defunded in the 90s, including the LHC. Then we would have forever been stuck with the strong suspicion that a Higgs is there, but no proof, along with untested but plausible-sounding well-motivated speculation over what else could be. Is that not worse than actually knowing?

glofish 7y ago
While it is true that nobody forces you to work for low pay - there is definitely misleading advertising at play. Most young people that pick science do not understand the "real" rules of science, and what it takes to "succeed". Being a good, reliable, hard-working scientists will not ensure your success. Whereas in many if not most jobs, being good at the job itself usually suffices.
- knzhou 7y ago
  I know what the rules are. In fact the community seems to be extremely transparent about it -- there are sites that keep track of all job offers out there for you, along with historical statistics. The struggle for jobs is the result of the government funding structure, plus supply and demand. It's not perfect, but it's infinitely preferably to the older system, where you could reliably do science only if you had great personal wealth, or were favored by somebody who did.
  - glofish 7y ago
    First and foremost, we are talking in general, about young scientists. Do you think they all know what they sign up for? I for one, having seen many hundreds of them, I don't think so. Then I will say, job offers are not relevant here. Who gets the job offer? What do they have to actually do in that job? Where are they going to be in 10 years? What kind of life, job security, job conditions, career advancement prospects do you have over the long term? For most scientists, these are the most nebulous concepts ever. You may think you know what the job is - maybe, I wouldn't know. What I do know that most people do not understand that a PI (principal investigator) at a University does nothing even remotely similar to what a postdoc (who wants to be a PI does)/ The churn and exploitation is very common.

oefrha 7y ago

> They are paid almost nothing (a checkout clerk at a Swiss supermarket makes more than a PhD student at CERN). Then you string along a subset of those for years, exploiting them for further cheap labor, somehow making them believe they are “lucky” to get that opportunity (a postdoc at CERN pays a fraction of what you can make at Google Zurich). That’s not unique to LHC, or CERN, or physics. It’s a general problem of academia, where PhDs and postdocs are paid a pittance compared to what they could otherwise earn in the industry. This problem is especially bad in high energy physics of course, since jobs are especially limited, and it’s the brightest people competing against each other, who could easily land jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. > Then there is literally decades of over promising on ground breaking discoveries right around the corner (super symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter). Standard Model works exceedingly well at LHC. No one was actually sure about BSM (beyond Standard Model) so there was no “promise” really. Or the promise is: we may see something interesting, or we may disprove some otherwise interesting theories. > Defunding the super collider in the 90s in the US was probably one of the best science policy decisions they made. Cancelling SSC was such a stupid waste of labor and money, it’s painful to see someone touting it as a triumph. Two words: defense budget. Enough said. Disclosure: I worked for CMS for a while. (Not physically at CERN; was doing data analysis for CMS in the U.S.)

zhdc1 7y ago
Want to throw out that PhD students at CERN & ETH/EPFL are still paid a living salary. Go outside of the ETH system and you can make a fair amount more (nothing considerable, but equivalent to what high school teacher in the states, which for a PhD student is nothing to sneeze at).
orbifold 7y ago
I'm pretty positive that people made firm predictions and bets that the LHC will see super partners (because otherwise the "naturalness" argument would go away). Whether it would be the MSSM or something else was up for debate, but people thought it would be more likely than not that they would see them if the Higgs was found in the predicted energy range. In any case physics departments at top universities all over the world are stacked with phenomenologists that made their careers on working out these predictions. Anderson made an argument against the SSC https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t..., which I pretty much agree with. Science funding is finite and physics talent in a country as well. Many really good students are funnelled into dead end careers in high-energy physics (whether theoretical or experimental). It's just a huge waste of human potential, especially given the fact of how ruthlessly they are exploited. I know people in the field, a hiring decision between three people was recently described to me as a choice between a 'social case' and two competent workers, one of which happens to be a friend of mine. Funnily enough lot's of institutions doing fundamental research in high energy physics either also do military research or receive military funding. Most of Witten's work for example has been funded by the Department of Energy. The whole reason CERN was build in a neutral country was because people worried that a post nuclear arms race would break out otherwise. In France one of the major institutes contributing to particle physics (Saclay Nuclear Research Centre) also developed their nuclear arsenal and is located next to a major arms manufacturers research center (Thalys).

magicalhippo 7y ago

> ALICE’s desaster of a analysis Pipeline Any references to this? First I've heard of it.

orbifold 7y ago
You can take a look here: https://github.com/alisw/AliRoot https://github.com/alisw/AliRoot

dekhn 7y ago

it is true that moving protobufs is more profitable than moving protons, but I think CERN represents a fundamentally interesting and important scientific endeavor.