Re-Evaluating Big Science

Thanks very much for Edwin Chen’s excellent article on the re-evaluation of Big Science projects, which is currently going on across the country (“Big Science Faces Big Troubles,” Column One, June 5). Such a re-evaluation is long overdue.

Although scientific research is invariably portrayed and justified as serving the cause of mankind, bettering the human race or whatever, two facts are very much in evidence: a) the vast majority of the problems afflicting the human race and the planet are ones which can be solved by applying what we know right now, and b) in an era of finite resources, every dollar we spend on super colliders, orbiting telescopes and space shuttles (not to mention Stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear subs and missile systems) is a dollar we will deny someone who is starving, sick, homeless, drug-addicted, out of work, mentally ill or handicapped.

A genuine commitment by our citizenry and so-called leaders to improve the human condition would result in rechanneling the vast resources we now devote to creating waste and death and applying them to our society’s problems. Think what could be done with the $160 billion currently slated for Big Science if we used it instead to: fund a national health care system; build housing for the homeless; provide breakfast and lunch for every schoolchild; provide prenatal care for every pregnant woman; implement fast, quiet mass transit in our cities; build humane treatment centers for the mentally ill; purchase vast wilderness preserves or clean up every major toxic waste site.

MATTHEW CLARK, San Diego