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CERN experiment discovers five new particles

stfc.ac.uk

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Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#51
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is being downvoted for a number of reasons. I'd like to use it as soapbox for a moment. One reason I left academia was the constant cycle of grant funding proposals followed by a flurry of publication followed by more proposals. These proposals often carried some requirement for language that, in my view, was a direct response to a certain kind of taxpayer, in order to justify on some tangible level the…

"deserve" is socialist talk. who's paying for it? why not let the market decide instead of stealing it from taxpayers?

What's the market value of General Relativity and the Standard Model? Where can I buy shares in them? What's the ROI this week?

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#52
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who just want funding don't work on things like the LHC. If you want to solve a problem while someone is throwing money at you, then you work in defense. You shouldn't be so quick to harshly judge people who are making the choice to explore the edges of what we can achieve rather than make a quick buck developing the best new way to kill someone.

right right. i am just totally making up this thing where research and results are forged, driven by state grants.

Yes you are. Do you really think no one would have noticed if the Standard Model was - as you call it - a forgery?

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"deserve" is socialist talk. who's paying for it? why not let the market decide instead of stealing it from taxpayers?

What's the market value of General Relativity and the Standard Model? Where can I buy shares in them? What's the ROI this week?

Ask SpaceX, General Electric, and the thousands of other companies that rely heavily on science.

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the market value of General Relativity and the Standard Model? Where can I buy shares in them? What's the ROI this week?

Ask SpaceX, General Electric, and the thousands of other companies that rely heavily on science.

That's the problem. They can't answer that question and neither can the market. The market is great at assigning value to things based on scarcity and demand, but there will never be scarcity of the Navier-Stokes equations because they can just be copied and shared so the market is useless for saying what they're worth.

And before a discovery is made literally nobody knows how it might change the world. I somehow doubt a thousand investors could have better predicted the future value of the transistor any better than the handful of electrical engineers working on that frontier.

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right right. i am just totally making up this thing where research and results are forged, driven by state grants.

Yes you are. Do you really think no one would have noticed if the Standard Model was - as you call it - a forgery?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-repl... http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... http://www.nature.com/news/science-journalism-can-be-evidenc...

40,000 scientific papers invalidated. - https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/scandal-mri-br...

http://nautil.us/blog/we-should-not-accept-scientific-result...

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re...

https://explorable.com/research-grant-funding - "Let's start by saying money does matter. It matters in every sector including science. Even if the researcher has a pure love of the scientific method, given the right circumstances, such as pride or the right amount of money, there may be some consideration given to skewing the data or holding back on publishing results for a little longer than they should."

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/13/scientific-r...

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask SpaceX, General Electric, and the thousands of other companies that rely heavily on science.

That's the problem. They can't answer that question and neither can the market. The market is great at assigning value to things based on scarcity and demand, but there will never be scarcity of the Navier-Stokes equations because they can just be copied and shared so the market is useless for saying what they're worth. And before a discovery is made literally nobody knows how it might change the world. I somehow dou…

good answer. thank you for taking me on. does it justify theft though?

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask SpaceX, General Electric, and the thousands of other companies that rely heavily on science.

That's the problem. They can't answer that question and neither can the market. The market is great at assigning value to things based on scarcity and demand, but there will never be scarcity of the Navier-Stokes equations because they can just be copied and shared so the market is useless for saying what they're worth. And before a discovery is made literally nobody knows how it might change the world. I somehow dou…

but companies such as cocacola, and well, many many others, are researching things all the time for discoveries that benefit their company.

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#58
post #38

you forgot to beg for more funding

Your comment is being downvoted for a number of reasons. I'd like to use it as soapbox for a moment. One reason I left academia was the constant cycle of grant funding proposals followed by a flurry of publication followed by more proposals. These proposals often carried some requirement for language that, in my view, was a direct response to a certain kind of taxpayer, in order to justify on some tangible level the…

Oh, some of it does come down to almost begging. It shouldn't, because funding discovery is important. People doing long hours of hard work for the common good shouldn't have to beg for funding. Then again, we shouldn't have to beg for school lunches or housing for military vets either but look at social media right now.

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem. They can't answer that question and neither can the market. The market is great at assigning value to things based on scarcity and demand, but there will never be scarcity of the Navier-Stokes equations because they can just be copied and shared so the market is useless for saying what they're worth. And before a discovery is made literally nobody knows how it might change the world. I somehow dou…

good answer. thank you for taking me on. does it justify theft though?

I have a hard time seeing taxation as always theft. In a democratic society the public either is or was part of the decision on whether or not to fund things like the LHC. If society agrees to pay for it then by definition there's no coercion.

I think the LHC has over a dozen participating countries, each of which volunteered to be part of it. Ideally there should be checks and balances making sure a project of this scale is free from corruption.

Re: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask SpaceX, General Electric, and the thousands of other companies that rely heavily on science.

That's the problem. They can't answer that question and neither can the market. The market is great at assigning value to things based on scarcity and demand, but there will never be scarcity of the Navier-Stokes equations because they can just be copied and shared so the market is useless for saying what they're worth. And before a discovery is made literally nobody knows how it might change the world. I somehow dou…

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