Exactly -- and that's the point I was trying to make about competition. Fermilab arguably is CERN's biggest "competitor" and it's entirely complementary – e.g.

Exactly -- and that's the point I was trying to make about competition. Fermilab arguably is CERN's biggest "competitor" and it's entirely complementary – e.g. look at the work done with LEP and Tevatron. In contrast, I've had other academics politely ask me not to present my work at a particular conference because so-and-so might be there and that might mean that they'd see it and their paper on x+∂x might come out before our paper on x-∂x, and that would make it harder to get into a particular journal, etc --- and I didn't. It's pretty stupid really. I wish we'd pool resources sensibly, and divide the big ideas ahead of time.