But what good can I do?

So my friends and I were having this discussion.

The Large Hadron Collider is just firing up, and the BBC reports that the project cost about 5 billion British pounds, took fourteen years to build, and occupied some 10,000 of the world's finest scientists. The collider is built to smash protons together at nearly the speed of light, and scientists will analyze the resulting collisions in hopes of finding out whether the current models of physics are right. The main experiment is an attempt to find the Higgs boson, a particle predicted to exist but which has not yet been observed.

What we were wondering about is, is this an ethical application of so much effort? Could it be put to better uses?

It's not just the LHC, though. The same question might be asked of publicly-funded science and engineering ventures, like the space shuttle programme, or basic science research, like the construction of a new radio telescope observatory.

So here's the question: Is it ethical to pour money into these projects, while there are still suffering people in the world?

It's a tough question to answer, especially if you're a young scientist thinking about what to do for your career. We want to do the right thing, of course. Should we put our own interests, curiosities, and fascinations on hold when there's others in need?

Well, I'll try my best to tackle this question.

People who say "no, it's not ethical" generally divide into two groups. The first argues that basic research like the LHC has no merit whatsoever, except perhaps to appease a small group of mad scientists who love building these giant accelerators. The second argues that, while these projects do have some value, it's not sufficient to merit the huge expense to the public.

The first is easy to refute. All we need to do is find some kind of practical benefit that can only have come about from these endeavours. I think it's not easy to come up with an exhaustive list, but I'll try to at least give some good examples.

Basic research means trying to learn about nature. It differs from inventing, which is applying what we know about nature to try to make our lives easier. Basic research includes proving math theorems, discovering Newton's laws of motion, learning what atoms are made of, finding out that the Earth goes around the sun and not vice versa, deciding on what gravity is, discovering the nature of DNA, and, yes, trying to tell whether or not the Higgs boson exists.

Well, to me at least, it seems like a strange claim to make that basic research is a less fruitful investment of effort than inventing. That's because we can't apply our knowledge of nature to make medicines and solar panels if we don't know how nature works in the first place! Mathematicians have a habit of engaging in research that seems to be so far removed from real life that it could never have applications. The worst of them are the Number Theorists, who are said to be deeply offended when it's suggested that their work could be put to practical use. But today, if you ever used a credit card online, number theory is at work keeping your personal information encrypted.

The way I see it, basic research tends to have lots of applications - but where and when they'll appear is impossible for anybody to predict. Half a century after J.J. Thompson discovered the electron came the invention of the transistor. It seems unlikely to me that the latter could have ever occurred without the former, but I doubt that Thompson could have ever dreamed what people might have used his research for. I'm sure that at the time, some people would have looked on his science as an ivory-towered pursuit. Now people learn about it in grade ten chemistry.

So my argument is that the benefits of basic research aren't so straightforward, but they do exist and they are significant.

The second is a bit more difficult. "If the benefits of basic research are so great", one may argue, "shouldn't the private sector perform it? Why spend so much public money?"

Some large private sector institutions (like Bell Labs) do give their scientists free range to do basic research, but it's pretty risky. It's difficult to make a business out of basic research, because no matter how savvy of a businessperson you are, or how smart your scientists are, you can't guarantee a big discovery. Furthermore - and this is the key point - you usually can't start with an invention in mind (like a transistor) that you could present to investors, and then ask your scientists to discover the electron so that you can build it. That just doesn't make sense!

The scope of our inventiveness is limited by the science that we already understand. It's impossible to predict how extending the range of our understanding will translate into new inventions. What we can say is that it's never a bad thing to learn a little bit more, and whenever we do, people look to see what new things will be made possible from that pursuit.



Well, okay. I didn't get to the heart of the moral question, but I did address a small part of it. That's probably enough for one day :)

-- Jacob