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I wouldn't mind them building it if they just used their own money. Spinoff cern companies have earned a $trillion or more revenue and probably a hundred billio
by irthomasthomas 4y ago
I wouldn't mind them building it if they just used their own money. Spinoff cern companies have earned a $trillion or more revenue and probably a hundred billions profit from things like medical imaging gear. They could well afford to fund themselves and a new collider without begging the public for money.
Cern really should be investigated and audited publicly, but it would take Delloites and PWC to follow that paper trail and audit hundreds of companies going back 25-30 years. I've always said it, cern is a scam, they take public money to fund product research, and then spin off separate companies to cream off the profits. Then they act broke and beg us for more money.
Edit: There is very little public information on this. The company accounts may be public, but like I said, there are hundreds of them going back 30 years, and no-one is motivated to do that kind of research. There is a recent study here[0] which looks at the economic benefit to companies that help build the research equipment. Obviously a lot of tech has to be invented just to build systems like this. But I haven't seen a similar study of the cern spin-off companies, or KT (Knowledge Transfer) partners in cern nomenclature, and that is where the real meat is.
I don't see why it would be so controversial for cern to retain some share in those KT companies and use that money to be self sufficient. That seems like a win for science.
[0] https://cds.cern.ch/record/2632083/files/CERN-ACC-2018-0022.pdf https://cds.cern.ch/record/2632083/files/CERN-ACC-2018-0022....
Further reading:
https://kt.cern/success-stories/fostering-culture-entrepreneurship-cern https://kt.cern/success-stories/fostering-culture-entreprene...
https://kt.cern/success-stories/managing-cern-intellectual-property https://kt.cern/success-stories/managing-cern-intellectual-p...
One example company (out of hundreds):
UK firm buys cancer-zapping spin-off from CERN collider
"The spin-off, known as Adam, was established in 2007 by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to build low-cost innovative accelerators for proton beam therapy (PBT) and conventional radiotherapy. Advanced Oncotherapy will pay for Adam in shares, giving CERN scientist Alberto Colussi, who founded the CERN business, a continuing stake in the technology."
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-cancer-cern-advancedoncotherapy-idUKBRE93N0BQ20130424 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-cancer-cern-advancedoncot...
https://www.avoplc.com/en-gb/Investors/Share-Price-Information https://www.avoplc.com/en-gb/Investors/Share-Price-Informati...
- scandox 4y agoThat sounds kind of like what every government dreams of - an institution you fund that does important scientific work and also generates a thriving ecosystem of private sector companies? If that's a scam then please take the shirt off my back.
- est31 4y agoYeah, it might be a non competitive investment for private investors because of the high risk compared to the low return or because the benefits are only seen years down the line, so results in a low annualized rate (you need to do it via nth root, not via dividing the returns by n). So governments do that investment instead. As a government you see things differently. Unless it goes abroad, the money is never gone, but is just going circles in your economy. If there is an added benefit of improvements decades down the line, even better.
- napier 4y agoPublic universities and research institutes?
- tormeh 4y agoYour criticism applies to basically all STEM research. Personally I like progress.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dizhn 4y agoDo you know any public sources about this topic I can look at?
- konschubert 4y agoI don't think that's true. CERN itself didn't create many (any?) successful companies. People who worked at CERN went on to create companies, but that doesn't create any money for CERN. Happy to be corrected.