End of a Scientific Legend? 243
pacopico writes to mention the sorry state of the well-known Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sixty years ago, it was at the forefront of the race for the Atomic bomb. Nowadays, "smugness can breed complacency, and complacency carelessness. In recent years the laboratory has been in the news not for its successes but its failures.The result is a change of management, which the story goes on to discuss in great detail. It begs the question - can Los Alamos hang on as a prestigious place or is it too late for the supercomputing powerhouse and weapons lab?"
It didn't jump; it was pushed (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the problem isn't new -- she points out in the interview that the Clinton administration was just as quick as anyone else to slam the door on global warming results that didn't match their polices. And in fact, the first two-thirds of the interview are studiously neutral in tone. But by the end, after host Terri Gross and Weinberger have laid the factual foundation, the Bush administration comes out looking pretty pathetic. With the current administration's secrecy, paranoia (the Wen Ho Lee [wikipedia.org] fiasco at Los Alamos gets particular attention), and general disregard for the scientific method, it's pretty clear that if Los Alamos falls, it didn't jump -- it was pushed.
begs the question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Argonne and Fermilab (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It didn't jump; it was pushed (Score:1, Insightful)
From the Wikipedia article you link to:
"Lee was arrested in December 1999 and held without bail in solitary confinement for 278 days until September 13, 2000, when he accepted a plea bargain from the federal government." (bold added)
I blame Bush!
Double standard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wierd Place (Score:2, Insightful)
Prescriptive/Descriptive, yes I know (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is one thing to violate the "don't end sentences with a prepostion" rule, and another thing entirely to take a word or phrase which has a very specific and nuanced meaning and try to make it apply to another situation through simple ignorance.
The best example I can come up with in the computer field is how most knowledgeable people will cringe when someone calls the computer itself the "hard drive" instead of a tower, box, or just "computer". "Hard drive" means something very specific, and calling something else by that name makes it very difficult for people to communicate. Language is an agreement by two people to use the same or at least similar conventions to aid in mutual understanding. People violating those conventions by laziness or ignorance gum up the works for everyone else.
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
America scrapped its supercollider while the Europeans built their LHC at CERN, so Europe will lead nuclear research for at least the next 20 years. Europe and Japan are doing advanced medical research while the US cuts funding and asks if its ethical to use stem cells.
The US has decided to abandon the Hubble telescope and allow it to burn up in the atmosphere, virtually abandon manned space travel, and divert most of the space research budget to militarizing space. Meanwhile the ESA is doing most of the space research and even China is launching manned missions.
Los Alamos losing its shine is such a minor thing compared to the rest of the US scientific community, it's barely worth noticing. The sad thing is by the time enough people notice the US is falling behind, it will be too late.
Re:begs the question? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are, of course, incorrect. "Begs the question" used to refer to a specific kind of logical fallacy. But the usage of this idiom has changed, and it is now a synonym for "raises the question", which can also in some (very rare) contexts refer to a specific kind of logical fallacy.
Arguing that you are right and common usage is wrong is like arguing that LASER, RADAR, and SCUBA should be written in all caps (they're acronyms, after all!), "e-mail" should be hyphenated, and a "computer" is a person who performs calculations by hand. The usage of these words, along with the phrase "begs the question", have changed, and it's time to accept that and move on. You might as well argue that we should all go back to speaking Old English -- it's simply not going to happen.
Re:begs the question? (Score:3, Insightful)
But it makes you sound smarter when you say "begs the question," right? Don't lawyers use them words? Lawyers are purty smart fellers.
Many "failures" were overblown (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-57/iss-12/p60.html [aip.org]
While Los Alamos has certainly had its share of fiascos, I think a lot of bad press they received was because 1) They are the most visible government lab, and 2) Many politicians hoped that if they could humiliate the lab management enough, someone from their state could end up with the (now extremely lucrative) management contract.
(Posted anonymously out of fear of DOE muckety-mucks)
It's too late for the USA. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:begs the question? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Many "failures" were overblown (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, many people had lots to gain by being allowed a chance to do their jobs with funding that really should have been sent to them in the first place.
If DOE cannot accept truth, candor, and real science, then they don't deserve to keep real scientists. If they fire a real scientist or engineer for calling a spade a spade, then they deserve the lab full of monkeys they created!
I am now laughing at the Fact that LANL is being managed by Rechtel (Bechtel) and Washington Group, the two prime contractors who have no honest clue how to run a lab, can never seem to make budget or schedule, and have superhuman abilities to tank workplace moral.
DOE does not deserve you if you are an honest person. My recommendation to you is to move on to private industry or another lab before Bechtel sets you up for a train wreck and blames you for it.
Re:Double standard? (Score:2, Insightful)
Developing nuclear wapons was the discovery of new information.
So you're suggesting that a company which limits the availability of information, and an organization which creates new information, are somehow moraly equivalent? That they should have the same level of prestiege?
Nonsense. The discovery of nuclear fission was a huge step in our understanding of the world around us. Any organizations which helped further the research into it deffinitely deserve fame and prestiege. Your argument makes you sound like a friggin' mormon, arguing that we shouldn't bother with the evils of science.
Re:begs the question? (Score:2, Insightful)
My guess would be that unlike programming languages, you don't usually get an error when you have a minor grammar or spelling mistake.
Moreover, if you can correct someones bad usage of language then it means you actually understood the message they were trying to convey, therefore the medium served it's purpose and any attempt to correct mistakes is purely academic.
Re:Well, that's kinda interesting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Next, from the article:
There's one very important thing that everyone asking this question simply doesn't understand, because they don't look closely enough: Los Alamos has gained itself the type of reputation that takes sixty years of world-class science to earn. This in turn draws the best minds from anywhere and everywhere to the highlands of New Mexico, where they voluntarily isolate themselves from the world at large while they work on the problems that the entirety of humankind needs solved.
This reputation is worth far more than even the money it cost to entirely shut the lab down and restart operations: it needed to be done to keep a sixty-year old priceless institution alive, because we simply cannot afford to loose it.