🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <22549@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>Given a (roughly) fixed physics budget, it is then the scientists who 
>decide, through a lengthy scientific/political debate, how the money will be
>subdivided among projects.

     Perhaps I don't understand science funding in the U.S.  I was under
the impression that the SSC money was over and above the NSF budget, not
out of it.  I would appreciate it if someone cleared up this point for
me.

>As I stated above, I think that you should decide how much money is to be
>spent on pure research, or perhaps on physics, and then let the scientists
>who really know how best to spend the money decide upon the details.

     Given the amount of money to be spent, you can hardly call the SSC
a "detail".  However your point strikes me as having a certain validity
so I should address it.  There are two cases to consider:

	  1) My statement above (that the SSC is "extra" money not
	     coming out of other budgets) is right.  In that case, Scott's
	     argument that scientists are setting the scientific agenda
	     is simply out of line with the facts.  The government has
	     decided to pay for this out of the taxpayer's pocket and
	     scientists have merely acted as highly interested cheerleaders.
          2) The SSC is actually funded out of the general science
	     budget.  In this case, Scott's argument is a little harder
	     to deal with.  Is the SSC going to affect non-physics
	     budgets?  In that case, I oppose it since physics is hardly
	     the only interesting science; while we must guard against
	     dictating how, in detail, science will spend its money, I
	     think we can reasonably require that the money which we, as
	     taxpayers, make available will be spread reasonably
	     evenly among productive scientific endeavours.  Similarly,
	     if going ahead with the SSC is going to affect other subfields
	     of physics, I have grave misgivings about the wisdom of the
	     project.

>I don't see how all of a sudden
>the Congress or any other non-expert citizens are able to judge better than 
>the scientists who are actually doing the work how best to spend the dollars
>allocated on the field.  

     It depends on what you mean by "the field".  As I wrote above, if
you mean "high-energy physicists should decide how high-energy physics
money is spent", I agree.  If you mean "we should let a simple majority
of physicists decide whether to take money from one subfield to fund a
big machine", I don't.  This process is just a liable to distortion as
the Congressional process.

>No one demands anything.  We ask, and society in its wisdom gives.  If a
>project is intrinsically expensive but still worth doing, then we pay.  You
>can't say that the Apollo program should have gotten less funding because 
>the ecologists (or artists, or whoever) can do *their* work with much less 
>money.  It's apples and oranges.

     Perhaps my earlier posting wasn't sufficiently clear.  It isn't the
amount of money which troubles me, but the constant escalation of the
demands (requests, or whatever you want to call them).  Artists (to take
another example of a group almost entirely supported by government
grants) seldom ask for extravagant funding increases, even though a lot
of modern art is much more expensive (in constant dollars) than earlier art
forms.  A typical artist simply spreads his or her work out over a longer
period if funding levels don't match the scale of the project.

>You surely have the right to voice your opinion, even if it is just a "gut"
>feeling.  But do you have the wisdom to allow the people who have real reasons
>for their expert opinions to decide how best to spend the physics dollars 
>that your government has already decided to spend?  

     That was the problem with the Kaon factory.  It was funded with
"new" money.  And if the project was such a good idea, why did its
proponents try to snow us with promises of great medical advances?  (I'm
not saying this won't happen, but I find it distasteful to see fellow
physicists try to hide their pet project behind medical science.  That's
not what they want the machine for, and they should just own up to it.)
Similarly, why is the SSC being sold at least partly on the merits of
its spinoffs?  It seems to me that if the scientific reasons for doing
this work are so compelling, the people involved should use this
opportunity to educate the public.  That way, even if the project isn't
approved, something will have been accomplished.

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca