3 ms·

Well, it's pretty clear that she wants to be funded, but funding decisions in research are mostly consensus -- the field decides what's funded, and I guess she

Well, it's pretty clear that she wants to be funded, but funding decisions in research are mostly consensus -- the field decides what's funded, and I guess she couldn't convince enough people to get funded. But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? Of course, she thinks spending on other work is not well directed, but others think spending it on her work is not well directed. While I think that maybe we just fund all (because really, it's not that much money -- for her group, we probably talk about a couple of shot-down balloon kind of money [Sidewinder is >300k], for several years worth of research), we do not live in that world. I want to note, though, that this "controversy", is very important for her book sales. I am not convinced that these books actually bring the field forward.

jackmott 4y ago
[dead]
lll-o-lll 4y ago
Ahh yes, why engage with the arguments when it’s so much easier to just attack the person? https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=IolRa2L1hLRyBMbULILeSw https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=I... Maybe address one or two of her actual points and try to refute them?
naasking 4y ago
> But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? No, because the vested interests have blinders on because they're invested in current paradigms. They could get stuck trying to find a local optimum rather than the global optimum we actually want. External objective assessments are sometimes needed, and Sabine is making a good case that particle physicists need a wake up call to get out of their rut. She won't convince the currently entrenched interests, but hopefully she's convincing graduate students that will start gaining influence over the next decade.
- davrosthedalek 4y ago
  The problem is that there is no external objective assessment. Sabine is certainly not external, for example, and somebody who hasn't studied the field can't make this assessment. So how do you differentiate, as a funding agency, between crackpottery (I get emails regularly), criticism because of disgruntled scientists (they didn't fund me!), and correct criticism?
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Sabine is certainly not external, for example, and somebody who hasn't studied the field can't make this assessment. The argument she lays out in this video is exactly such an assessment. She is an external agent because she's not working in particle physics. Plenty of other physicists are in the same position and can impartially evaluate the state of particle physics and where funding for basic science research should go. What are the objective reasons to justify the expense of yet larger particle accelerators at this point? It's literally just for the hell of it, all the low hanging fruit has long since been plucked. There are no theoretical reasons to expect to find anything. Empirically, we haven't found anything surprising in numerous previous accelerators. The Higgs was expected and justified the LHC. If the Higgs had not been found, then there would have been a decent argument for a larger accelerator, but that's not the world we live in. The colossal funds that would go towards a larger accelerator could fund literally thousands of scientific experiments that aren't suffering from diminishing returns. We'd be better off funneling that money towards wakefield accelerators, for instance.
    - davrosthedalek 4y ago
      I think you need to look at her academic record. She has many publications in HEP fields. Adjacent fields might be able to judge the state, but is nuclear physics really independent? Astro (which has a large overlap with PP)?. A condensed matter physicist cannot evaluate the field, the same way as a particle physicist cannot evaluate the field of CM. Additionally: The relative attribution of funds is decided by funding agencies, by reviewing the individual fields and asking for input from these fields, using panels that span fields. The finer contribution in the field then depends on experts in the field. It's also not true that money is fungible in that way. Especially for bigger projects like this, without such a project, the money just wouldn't be there. And if you don't trust the in-field experts to distribute the money, why do you believe that out-field experts, who directly would profit from the diverted funding (if the money would be a zero sum game), are neutral?

jackmott 4y ago

[dead]

lll-o-lll 4y ago

Ahh yes, why engage with the arguments when it’s so much easier to just attack the person? https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=IolRa2L1hLRyBMbULILeSw https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1624398748410421248?s=20&t=I... Maybe address one or two of her actual points and try to refute them?

naasking 4y ago

> But how else should be? In a regime with limited funds, after it has been decided how much money to give to HEP, isn't it the best if the HEP community decides how to spend it? No, because the vested interests have blinders on because they're invested in current paradigms. They could get stuck trying to find a local optimum rather than the global optimum we actually want. External objective assessments are sometimes needed, and Sabine is making a good case that particle physicists need a wake up call to get out of their rut. She won't convince the currently entrenched interests, but hopefully she's convincing graduate students that will start gaining influence over the next decade.

davrosthedalek 4y ago
The problem is that there is no external objective assessment. Sabine is certainly not external, for example, and somebody who hasn't studied the field can't make this assessment. So how do you differentiate, as a funding agency, between crackpottery (I get emails regularly), criticism because of disgruntled scientists (they didn't fund me!), and correct criticism?
- naasking 4y ago
  > Sabine is certainly not external, for example, and somebody who hasn't studied the field can't make this assessment. The argument she lays out in this video is exactly such an assessment. She is an external agent because she's not working in particle physics. Plenty of other physicists are in the same position and can impartially evaluate the state of particle physics and where funding for basic science research should go. What are the objective reasons to justify the expense of yet larger particle accelerators at this point? It's literally just for the hell of it, all the low hanging fruit has long since been plucked. There are no theoretical reasons to expect to find anything. Empirically, we haven't found anything surprising in numerous previous accelerators. The Higgs was expected and justified the LHC. If the Higgs had not been found, then there would have been a decent argument for a larger accelerator, but that's not the world we live in. The colossal funds that would go towards a larger accelerator could fund literally thousands of scientific experiments that aren't suffering from diminishing returns. We'd be better off funneling that money towards wakefield accelerators, for instance.
  - davrosthedalek 4y ago
    I think you need to look at her academic record. She has many publications in HEP fields. Adjacent fields might be able to judge the state, but is nuclear physics really independent? Astro (which has a large overlap with PP)?. A condensed matter physicist cannot evaluate the field, the same way as a particle physicist cannot evaluate the field of CM. Additionally: The relative attribution of funds is decided by funding agencies, by reviewing the individual fields and asking for input from these fields, using panels that span fields. The finer contribution in the field then depends on experts in the field. It's also not true that money is fungible in that way. Especially for bigger projects like this, without such a project, the money just wouldn't be there. And if you don't trust the in-field experts to distribute the money, why do you believe that out-field experts, who directly would profit from the diverted funding (if the money would be a zero sum game), are neutral?