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It's really not low single digit. Firstly it's a proposal for ~€100bn (not ~$100bn), the current program is ~€80bn. Secondly if you look at the spending[1] more

• vidarh 6y ago
  > Firstly it's a proposal for ~€100bn (not ~$100bn), the current program is ~€80bn. €100bn is $113bn; ~€80bn is $90bn. $100bn is close enough. > It's really not low single digit. EU budget != European science funding. The $100bn number was used to illustrate that the amount is not that huge, with the addition that "on top of that all the member states have their own projects, and non-EU European states have their own science funding." As I pointed out elsewhere, e.g. Norway, which is one of the 23 CERN members but not an EU member, has an annual R&D budget of $6bn. Over the roughly 30 year period of this project, that's $180bn. Even if you assume half of that is what you consider "soft" funding (quite likely), Norway alone could fund all of CERN and this new collider (of course that would devastate Norway's other science programs). As it stands, Norway's contribution to CERN is about $30m/year, which adds up to the highest per capita contribution of any CERN member. The UK for example pays less than half as much per capita. It is overall likely (I haven't checked) that CERN adds up to less than a single percent of the science budgets of its member states alone. The CERN member states make up less than half of European countries (though most of the biggest and richest), so it's fairly safe to assume it takes up less than a percent of overall European science funding.
  • avar 6y ago
    > [...]it's fairly safe to assume it takes up less than a percent of overall European science funding. No it's not. We're in a thread where the cost of the LHC and its successors is being contrasted against funding for other comparable fundamental research, such as gravitational wave or neutrino detectors etc. Or other projects anyone might reasonably classify as fundamental research. You're conflating that with R&D budgets. Let's take your example of Norway. 50% of its R&D budget is goes to industry, and 50% of that to the service industry. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that nobody in Norway's service industry is going to be getting a Nobel any time soon. Due to how state subsidies are regulated in the EU's single market (and Norway, Iceland etc. count here too, they're in it through the EEA) R&D has become a backdoor for state subsidies. A supermarket paying a consultant to improve their billing system can be doing "research" and get a tax write-off or a state grant. So you really shouldn't assume that you can conflate R&D in the EU's twisted definition with what is commonly understood to be R&D. Now, back to Norway's numbers. In [1] you can see that around 20% of that $6bn goes to institutes, and around page 20 or so in [2] you can see where all this money goes. Without going into a lot of detail I think it's fair to say the overall budget is mostly irrelevant to what we're discussing here. I'll let the fact that as [2] shows the industrial sector gets 50% of the funding but produces 2% of the scientific publications speak for itself. Once you tease all this apart you'll find that by any sane definition the LHC and its successor project eat up a huge amount of the money that's spend on fundamental research of the sort that might yield a Nobel price any other measure you might use as a proxy for a fundamental new discovery in science. And of course even the LHC/FCC blurs the line between the two. If CERN could spend that same money on more whiteboards and chalk for physicists and get the same results it would never be funded. The real purpose of the project includes being a subsidy for Europe's high-tech industries. Once you peel back the curtains on how any of these projects are run you'll find that member states that kick in some % of funding expect and mandate that approximately that % works its way back to them in one way or another. In "The Large Hadron Collider: A Marvel of Technology" by Lyndon R. Evans it's mentioned that the initial construction plan for the LHC was rejected by member states since it didn't do a good enough job of spreading the pork around. 1. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YRYPqQ35AqEJ:https://www.nifu.no/en/statistics-indicators/nokkeltall/hovedtall/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YRYPqQ... 2. https://www.forskningsradet.no/contentassets/8f25adbfd4cb437eb784b4d06ca35700/science-and-technology-indicators-for-norway-2019_20.12.19_final.pdf https://www.forskningsradet.no/contentassets/8f25adbfd4cb437...