Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
11 - What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
My colleague Professor Mozart burst into my office, just back from a pro-SSC rally in Washington and still full of excitement. “The police estimated the crowd at seventy thousand, but it was at least a quarter of a million. It makes you proud to be a physicist. And to top it all off. while I was dodging tear-gas canisters, it came to me!”
“Tear gas, at a pro-SSC demonstration?” I gasped in disbelief.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “An enormous crowd, unaware that they should have been addressing their concerns to Congress, started to march toward the White House chanting, ‘Hey, hey, Allan Bromley, give us the Higgs or we won't go calmly!’ and the Secret Service must have panicked. Those teenagers can be frightening, you know. They really get quite out of control when they think we might pass up an opportunity to find the Higgs. And those MIVeBs can be pretty alarming too, when they're on the move,”
“MIVeBs?” I inquired.
“Mothers for Intermediate Vector Bosons,” he explained impatiently, unable to disguise his disdain at how out of touch I was with the Movement. “But then as the first canisters started to pop, I realized how simple the solution really was.”
“Solution to what?”
“The funding problem for the individual investigator, of course! I can't imagine why nobody has thought of it before. We simply abolish all such grants, freeing the investigators to return to the full-time pursuit of their individual science.” He settled into my only comfortable chair, beaming with satisfaction.
I've heard some zany things from Mozart before, but this one was just a little too self-serving to let pass. “Very fine for you, W. A.,” I said with ill-concealed scorn, “who loathe writing proposals and progress reports and feel no responsibility for training the next generation of physicists. But what about the more conscientious members of our profession? How are they to keep the enterprise of small science alive?”
I hadn't intended to be so brusque with him, but it really is disgusting to see how much happier he's become since his grant was cut. Undeterred by my swipe, he continued.
“You don't understand. I'm not proposing to abolish support for small science—just to stop distributing it so irrationally. Take that next generation. Why do the agencies give out so few graduate student fellowships, and only for the first few years?
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 75 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016