You’re absolutely right, and those projects were absolutely worth the cost to society in retrospect. It’s why I’m generally in favor of exploratory research. I

You’re absolutely right, and those projects were absolutely worth the cost to society in retrospect. It’s why I’m generally in favor of exploratory research. I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other about building another particle accelerator: the costs are significant, but manageable, and I haven’t followed the science enough to get a good idea of the likely benefit. The question posed, however, was whether the cost could ever be too high. The only answer to that question is “yes,” regardless of the topic.