The Future Circular Collider (FCC) or as I call it “The Really, Really, Really Large Hadron Collider (TRRRLHC) is proposed to be 91 kilometers in circumference and estimated to cost $30-40 billion. Now granted, this is chump change when US military projects are considered. But when it is taken into account the fact that it is very, very, very unlikely to provide any useful information at all to scientists it does seem somewhat uncareful with the public’s money.
I was just watching Sabine Hossenfelder’s latest video where she explains why the community of high-energy particle physicists despise her. You see she was a high energy particle physicist herself but she discovered that the whole field had become a racket. All of these highly intelligent scientists are basically engaged in fraud. Instead of doing actual research in physics they are employed at fabricating theories for which not a shred of evidence exists but for which tests can be devised to justify building larger and larger colliders.
I give Hossenfelder credit for her integrity. She describes the personal vitriol that her colleagues heap on her for calling out their fraud. She is right. American and European governments fund these outrageously expensive instruments and also foot the bill for all of the research grants that fund the half-century long careers of all the thousands of particle physicists that subsist on this government gravy train.
Well, at least in the United States a lot of this will probably be going away very soon. DOGE is tallying up the costs for and analyzing the alleged benefits of all these research grants. I think that the great majority of these research grants will be denied funding starting next year.
Now, before being accused of being a Luddite, let me state that a case can be made for some scientific research being facilitated by federal money. I can see how research on nuclear weapons, laser systems to knock down drones and lots of other military adjacent categories could justify the government underwriting some part of the work. And there is probably biological research that the various government agencies on health could decide deserve government funding. But anything with dark energy, dark matter, worm hole, black hole, multiverse or string theory in the title should definitely be denied funding automatically. Likewise, any social science grants with the words diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, intersectional, BiPOC, Latinx, gender, transgender, gender fluid, pansexual, LGBTQ, pronouns, feminist, white nationalism, white supremacy, whiteness, white privilege, white fragility, resistance, sanctuary or Trump in the title should be denied and the authors put in a database for rejection from that point forward.
Look, industry will foot the bill for any scientific research for which applications in the real world exist. And the government can make a case for expanding knowledge in certain limited academic categories where knowledge can improve the lives of Americans. Predicting weather and solar storms are easy examples. But as fascinating as black holes and multiverses are let’s leave these subjects to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to imagine and let scientists try using reality and experiments involving reality as their province.
For my part I am willing to do my part and fund research on coffee that doesn’t turn bitter after fifteen minutes on the stove. You see I believe in following the science.
