Big Science and Little Science

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Big Science and Little Science
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Big Science

• A term used to describe a series of changes in
  science which occurred in industrial nations
  during and after WW II, when the making of
  science shifted from individual or small group
  efforts, or Small Science, to relying on
  large-scale heavily funded projects
• Small science is still relevant today as
  theoretical results by individuals may have a
  significant impact, but very often empirical
  verification requires experiments using
  constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider
  costing between 5 and 10 billion

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Example Of Big Science SSC

• Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) a US
  financed Physics project abandoned in 1993
• The primary justification for the machine was a
  search for particles known as Higgs bosons, which
  determined the size (a fifty-four-mile-long ring)
  and the projected cost (4.4 billion)
• The US Govt faced with a more than doubled price
  tag voted to kill the project, but not before 2
  billion had been spent, the superconducting
  magnets had been tested, 1/3 of the ring had been
  excavated, and thousands of physicists and
  engineers from around the world were working out
  detailed designs

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Definitions

• "Big Science" usually implies one of these
  characteristics of 20th century science
• Big budgets Increased govt support meant
  scientists were no longer required to rely on
  philanthropy or industry
• Big staffs Labs The number of practitioners of
  science on any one project grew, creating
  difficulty, and often controversy, in the
  assignment of credit for scientific discoveries
  (eg. the Nobel Prize system allows awarding only
  3 individuals in any one topic, based on a
  19th-cent. model of science)
• Big machines The use of many machines, eg. many
  sequencers used during the Human Genome Project,
  enormous particle accelerators with
  circumferences of many kilometers, eg 3.26.4
  billion for the Large Hadron Collider

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Criticisms of Big Science

1. Undermines the basic principles of the scientific
   methodresults that require massive and unique
   machines are often difficult to verify
2. Access to scientific facilities is often limited
   to those who are already accomplished, leading to
   charges of elitism
3. Increased government funding has often meant
   increased military funding, which some claim
   subverts the Enlightenment-era ideal of science
   as a pure quest for knowledge
4. Many scientists also complain that the
   requirement for increased funding makes a large
   part of the scientific activity filling out grant
   requests and other budgetary bureaucratic
   activity
5. The intense connections between academic,
   governmental, and industrial interests have
   raised the question of whether scientists can
   remain objective when their research contradicts
   the interests of their benefactors

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Cause of Big Science?

• The Philosopher Nicholas Rescher has suggested an
  possible simple explanation for the development
  of Big ScienceWe do the simple things first
• His theory of the history of science suggests
  reasons for questioning whether the progress of
  science is inevitable
• Each science my be fundamentally beset by a law
  of diminishing returns

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World Population 10,000-Today