Indeed. The question isn't, "Did this experiment advance scientific knowledge," the question is, "Was this a prudent and appropriate use of tax money, especially in light of the enormous opportunity costs inherent in any expenditure of tax money?"
People who make the decisions to spend money on this scale - US$ 9 billion! - must be well qualified to make such decisions, and do so after careful consideration of various alternatives.
I think it was the right decision. Of course opportunity cost must be considered - you could have had, instead: 1 new Nimitz class aircraft carrier (without the air wing), OR 4 new B-2 bombers OR 1 extra week of Bush tax cuts....
Surely not an argument from authority. Before we can accept this reasoning, we have to have proof that the people allocating the research funds have interests that well match those of the public, not just the scientific community, and we must also have proof that they have a good track record of applying those interests to ends that match them.
But the LHC is basic research, you can't do ROI calculations on that. Instead, you dump as much money as you can into it, and then you know that decades down the line, you'll be very happy that you did it.
How do you know that? Has all blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades down the line?
That's the wrong question.
"Has blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades down the line?"
is a better one and the answer is a most definitive yes, many many many times the amount of money put into it, on the order of trillions of dollars.
Do each and every blue sky pure R&D experiment yield such results? Heck no! Neither does any known investment vehicle.
I asked the question I meant to ask. The point is not that we should stop doing blue sky research if examples exist where it has produced no benefit. It is quite obvious that blue sky research has been useful to us over the course of time. That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte blanche to spend taxpayer money.
The point is to weigh the likely benefits of all the various types of blue sky research available to us at any given time and try to spend more on research that is likely to be useful.
> Neither does any known investment vehicle.
And like any investment vehicle, I ask that we consider whether any given piece of blue sky research is likely to appreciate or be a money sink. This was, if you'll read back, my original query. I don't understand why the people in this forum consider this question so outrageous.
Ask any lab director what the risk level (of failure) of pure R&D is and they'll happily respond "very high". Pure R&D is such a high gamble that its virtually not commercially viable. And history shows that successful research often does not immediately benefit the organization that conducted the research.
But nearly everything you interact with on a daily basis was blue sky research at some point. The electricity you use, the car you drive, the networks you communicate on, the rf technology that underpins that, the processors that control your devices, the components that make up a modern microprocessor, the storage and memory technologies in your electronic devices, probably much of the food you eat, the products you clean yourself with, nearly all of the medicine you might take and pretty much any modern medical techniques you may benefit from, the water you drink, the plumbing and sewage systems you use and on and on and on and on.
Unless you live in a purposely technologieless enclave (and even those groups benefit from time-to-time from pure R&D), you personally benefit in uncountable ways from the research that was the result of what many people thought was pouring money down a hole.
But your point That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte blanche to spend taxpayer money.
Is also absolutely true. That's why its important to put knowledgeable people in the decision making process to pull the trigger on something like this and we don't end up burning money on perpetual motion machines or faith healers.
Good idea in theory perhaps, but how do you suggest to make that assessment?
Or: basic science is a public good, and is underinvested in by free markets.
Also, take a look at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind96/chap_8.pdf, table 8.1, for estimates of rates of return on scientific research.
- Liquid crystals observed. - Materials science research into the properties of liquid crystals, during which the TN-effect was discovered. - Industry scientists looking for a display technology that did not rely on vacuum tubes use the TN-effect to develop practical liquid crystal displays.
I don't see where the blue sky research on quantum mechanics plays into this, but it seems like you know more about this than I do so maybe you can point out the link I am missing. Maybe you mean the materials science research on liquid crystals, but it seems to me like materials science is largely a practical field whose main question is, "Is there anything useful we can do with this stuff." I don't think of it as blue sky research the same way I think of particle physics.
The study you linked is mostly about practical R&D in an industry setting and seems to suggest it's very difficult to measure the economic impact of basic research. But there was some interesting information in there, and thank you for that.
As for the study - yes, such returns are very difficult to measure or even estimate accurately, as the range of estimates suggest. But won't you agree that a) the consensus is that R&D is extremely valuable, and b) this can probably be extrapolated to basic scientific research?
(I feel that I am about to gain a convert to the cause of supporting scientific research... my time here has been well spent).
I could apply this quote to all kinds of other ways of spending money, and it would hold true (e.g. infrastructure or social programs). And while you can't do ROI calculations on long-range programs, you can make informed decisions about which are more likely to provide the greatest benefits. In fact, if you are talking about spending billions of dollars of other people's money, you have a moral and ethical obligation to do exactly that.